236 Missouri Agricultural Rejjort. 



health. She gives him power of resistance to help withstand the 

 attacks of disease germs and other bacteria. But these resistant 

 powers are very uncertain and unreliable. They differ with dif- 

 ferent people and with different periods of life. They are less 

 in babies than in adults. They are not the same at all times in 

 the same individual. As a rule they tend to decrease as we live 

 an unnatural or artificial life. All the mysteries of life and death 

 it is not given us to know, but we do know that one person may 

 violate almost every physical law and live to a good old age — while 

 another under apparently favorable conditions succumbs to 

 typhoid fever or tuberculosis. Not every unvaccinated person ex- 

 posed to smallpox contracts the disease. Many survive an epi- 

 demic of cholera. Not everybody who drinks unclean milk goes 

 to an untimely grave. But it is wise to avoid as many chances as 

 possible. It is not good judgment to cross railroad tracks in front 

 of a moving train because you have never yet been run over. Be- 

 cause every cry of mad dog is not followed by a case of hydrophobia 

 shall we lessen our efforts to eradicate rabies? If only one baby 

 in 500 contracts tuberculosis through its milk supply, if that baby 

 were yours or mine, would we not favor the compulsory use of 

 tuberculin? Shall we allow sanitary science to keep company 

 with the lost arts because many people are tough enough (have 

 sufficient resistant power) to live in spite of bad conditions? Shall 

 we feed the babies of our cities with poisonous milk because it 

 does not act with the quickness and certainty of arsenic? 



CLEAN MILK, HOW.? 



The remedies for the three forms of bacterial contamination 

 of milk are prevention : First, all cows producing milk to be 

 used raw as a human food should be tuberculin tested. This test 

 will not only result in a safer supply of milk, but it will help the 

 producer by saving him from loss. Tuberculosis is a menace to 

 the cow raiser and owner, subjecting him to great losses, and it 

 should be exterminated to prevent these losses even if there were 

 no question of public health. Tuberculosis is a formidable enemy 

 to animal husbandry. The annual tuberculin test is based on the 

 same principle of economy as the purchase of an insurance policy. 



Second: No person should have anything to do with milk 

 who has any contagious disease or when any such disease exists 

 among his immediate associates. Take typhoid fever as an illus- 

 tration ; the seeds of this disease come only from the feces of some 

 person who has or has had the disease, and these germs get into 



