THE JHAWAIIAN 



rQR£8TER I AGRICULTURIST 



Vol. X. JANUARY, 1913. No. 1. 



IMPORTANCE OF PROTECTING THE MILK SUPPLY. 



In the annual report of the regents of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, for the year ending June 30, 1911, there is an exceedingly 

 interesting article entitled, "Profitable and Fruitless Lines of En- 

 deavor in Public Health Work," by Edwin O. Jordan, Professor 

 of Bacteriology, University of Chicago. In some points the ar- 

 ticle is as startling as anything that has come from Chicago pro- 

 fessors — some of whose pronouncements in recent years have 

 produced world thrills — for it sets forth opinions that must shock 

 the ordinary sanitarian in regard to methods that have come to be 

 deemed based on first principles of public hygiene. Professor 

 Jordan attacks with the citation of authorities and evidence the 

 expenditure of large proportions of health funds, as well as re- 

 strictive legislation, upon disinfection, the removal of garbage, 

 plumbing inspection, etc. Even the house fly has a plea in abate- 

 ment entered on his behalf, to the now almost universal indict- 

 ment of being a disseminator of disease. Here is a specimen of 

 Professor Jordan's iconoclastic criticism of modern sanitary meth- 

 ods, on a subject additional to those just mentioned: 



"In the matter of heating and ventilation enormous sums have 

 been spent and are being spent to renew the air in rooms and 

 public assembly halls and to introduce pure air in what has been 

 assumed to be necessary amounts. And yet if the work of Beu, 

 Heymann, Paul, Erclentz, Flugge, Leonard Hill and others means 

 anything, it demonstrates that the whole effect from bad air and 

 crowded rooms is due to heat and moisture and not to carbon 

 dioxide or to any poisonous excretions in expired air. When all 

 the effects of crowd poison upon a group of individuals in an 

 experimentally sealed chamber can be eliminated by rapidly 

 whirling electric fans, it is useless any longer to look upon 

 carbon dioxide as a measure of danger. If we recognize 

 that all the discomfort from breathing air in a confined space is 

 due to a disturbance of the thermal relations of the body, the 

 problem of ventilation becomes very different from what has 

 usually been supposed." 



The matters above referred to are, however, somewhat foreign 



