CO-OPERATION 133 



and wholesome, or else comparatively free from bacteria and yet 

 seriously poisonous. To take one telling instance, the " sour " milk 

 which became remarkably fashionable in our country some years 

 ago under the benison of the Bulgarian Professor Metchnikoff, and 

 which, prepared in a less scientific manner, constitutes a highly 

 valued staple article of food, prized for its sanitary qualities, through- 

 out the German- and Slav-speaking countries — as, in medical men's 

 phrase, " not only digesting itself, but helping to digest also other 

 food " in virtue of the lactic acid produced in it by fermentation, 

 closely resembles gastric juice — literally swarms with bacteria. 

 However, there are good bacteria as well as bad. The sanitariness 

 of milk, accordingly, depends rather upon the quality than the 

 number of bacteria present in it. The influence of " surroundings " 

 — to which we attach so very great importance — has, likewise, in 

 the words of Dr. R. Breed, of the Geneva station, been " greatly 

 over-estimated." He has had milk brought to him for testing 

 produced in the old-fashioned way on a small farm, " with the 

 simplest equipment, where the man himself was doing the work and 

 the wife was taking care of the dairy utensils," and found that the 

 milk thus produced was " invariably of a higher quality than that 

 from some of the farms that had much finer dairy equipments." 

 And, again, the danger of bacterial poisoning arising from " dust, 

 dirt," and even " cow -dung " dropping into the milk, has been set 

 down at much too high a figure. Of course, those unappetising 

 admixtures are much better left out; but on experiment it has 

 been found that they are not by any means the tempting settling 

 places for bacteria that they have been taken to be, but, in truth, 

 are, under such aspect, almost innocuous. The point to which, 

 accordingly, above all things, examination ought to be directed — 

 more particularly in countries like New York State, where, under 

 stringent legislation, "milk standardisation" has come, to a con- 

 siderable extent, to mean " milk adjustment," by the addition 

 or else the removal of " butter-fat," now accepted as the decisive 

 test — is, according to Dr. Breed, less " surroundings " than the 

 " handling " of the milk itself. " An inspection of this type is 

 more likely to produce a real control of the quality of the milk 

 itself than the dairy inspector's, based upon the dairy score card." 



Under the influence of these discoveries recourse is now being 

 had to a new method of examination, of which, thus far, no notice 

 appears to have been taken in this country, and which, even so, 

 cannot yet be accepted as a final solution of the problem. 



Under that system, so the report says, a ' Report card," 



