state Dairy Association. 237 



another person only through the mouth, with food or drink. These 

 germs are frequently spread by getting upon the hands of some one 

 who has had the care of a sick person or the bedding or clothing 

 of such person and who, without washing them so that they are 

 bacterially clean, touches food or handles utensils in which food 

 is prepared or stored. The disease may be spread by flies crawl- 

 ing over infected excreta, getting the seeds of the fever on tlieir 

 legs and bodies and then visiting the milk pail or can. Recent 

 medical papers are reporting an epidemic of 53 cases of t5T)hoid 

 fever in Denver, Colo. : Every family in which it appeared had 

 milk from the same dairy. The wife of the dairyman was found 

 to be sick with the fever; the excreta were not properly guarded, 

 and it is believed the infection was conveyed by flies. 



To avoid infection of milk from contagious diseases take pre- 

 cautions as to the health of those who handle the milk and milk 

 utensils as well as the associates of those employed in the dairy. 

 Sterilize bottles and utensils everytimie they are used, keep flies 

 away from the milk and every thing with which milk will come 

 iyi contact. One hundred thousand fecal bacteria have been found 

 on the legs of a single fly. 



Third : Practice the greatest possible cleanliness in every 

 detail relating to the dairy. This brings up emphatically the How.^ 

 of my subject. 



If clean milk is desirable because dirty milk is unwholesome, 

 then we want to come as near as possible to clean cows, clean milk- 

 ers, clean barns, clean milk rooms and clean utensils, remembering 

 that cleanliness has a new significance now-a-days. But there 

 is so little realization of the meaning of the word clean that were 

 I stop here I fear you would take from this talk very little in 

 the way of helpful suggestion. 



The modern sanitary milk movement is so new that as I hav(? 

 said, many do not know what the word clean means, and that 

 many time-honored practices are bad. Within a few months I 

 visited a dairy and found the proprietor an intelligent, successful 

 farmer, who began to apologize effusively for his old barn, saying 

 that he intended to build a new one as soon as he could get at it. 

 It was not very good, but I found the interior of the barn dark, 

 damp and dirty. A pile of mouldy hay in one corner sent out a 

 stench to mingle with odors of horse manure and cow manure in 

 an indescribable blend. Men were milking with filthy hands and 

 pouring the milk through the foul stable air into cans about which 

 myriads of flies buzzed in anticipation of a balanced ration of 



