CO-OPERATION 129 



of sundry outbreaks of septic sore throat, were plainly due to milk 

 poisoning. Such epidemics ranged from 25 to 30, upwards to 100 

 cases each, and, as Mr. James E. Thomas, chief of the Milk In- 

 spection Bureau of the Food and Drugs Department of Health of 

 the City of New York writes : " You can estimate for yourself the 

 loss of the country through these cases." And he adds that each 

 case of typhoid in which there is recovery is estimated to stand the 

 country in $350. 



As milk comes into the trade there are dust, hairs, dirt, cow dung, 

 mud, pus, animals, scabs and other abominations in it, which even 

 the most careful straining will not remove. As milk comes from a 

 sound and healthy cow, provided that it is kept clean, it is sound 

 enough, practically free from bacteria. However, we live in a 

 contaminated world. The very source from which that valued milk 

 is drawn is poisoned. Of the many impurities which float in the 

 milk, as we have been in the habit of receiving and drinking it, the 

 larger number of those dangerous bacteria, which threaten the 

 consumer with tuberculosis and other complaints, come, as Dr. 

 Navington, Director of the Laboratory of the Department of Health 

 of Toronto, has shown, from the intestinal canal of the cow itself. 

 Those bacteria certainly no straining of any sort can remove. It is 

 the infected cow that wants removing from the herd. But even 

 that only partially remedies things. For, as even very little keeping 

 in the wide-mouthed open pails or buckets exposes the milk to the 

 by no means imaginary danger of all sorts of filth dropping into it, 

 so it is also apt to bring about a rapid multiplication of deadly 

 bacteria. Therefore, unless we are prepared to perpetuate for our- 

 selves, and for our even far more susceptible children, the danger of 

 infection with fatal disease, we shall have to take measures which 

 will insure that our milk, after coming from the cow, shall be treated 

 in such manner as to exclude the danger indicated. We have in 

 milk, as indeed Dr. Nasmyth, of the same Laboratories Department 

 of Health in Toronto, declares, " potentially the most dangerous food 

 in use. It is a veritable culture medium for bacterial growth." 



In three towns in the State of New York, where there were bad 

 outbreaks of scarlet fever — the last-named the most frequent result 

 of milk poisoning — causing in one year between 500 and 600 cases 

 of illness and over fifty deaths, it was found that all the cases were 

 due presumably to milk poisoning. There was found in one dairy, 

 from which the milk consumed had come, at least one cow affected 

 with one of the said diseases ; no similar cases occurred in families in 

 the same district who secured milk from some other source. 



r.r. K 



