MILK SUPPLY : DISCUSSION 231 



10,000 inhabitants. He brought with him a member of the 

 State Department of Agriculture, who gave an address to 

 the farmers, telling them how they could improve their 

 methods of dairying, and the farmers in the district were 

 now going to get together to improve the conditions under 

 which they carried on their work. The farmer wanted to 

 do right, and the medical officer wanted to assist him, and 

 the two working together was, he was convinced, the way in 

 which progress would be made. 



Dr. R. SIDNEY MARSDEN (Birkenhead) said that a great 

 deal of what he had intended to say had already been said, 

 and therefore he would not repeat it. There was, however, 

 one thing he wanted to say, and that was that he hoped the 

 Conference would not fall in with the suggestion of the ladv 

 from Manchester that the milk supply should be munici- 

 palized. It was essentially a retail business, and ought to be 

 kept as it was, under control. The conditions under which 

 this country was supplied with milk were steadily and 

 gradually improving, and he thought they might say that 

 the conditions were improving as rapidly as could reasonably 

 be expected considering the economic difficulties. He 

 wanted to ask Dr. Hope one question how best could they 

 improve an infected milk supply? In Liverpool they were 

 trying a new scheme of sterilization by electricity. He 

 would like to ask Dr. Hope whether he could tell them 

 whether such sterilization affected the nutritive value of the 

 milk, for that was a very important point. To kill a germ 

 was not like electrocuting an individual who was killed by 

 nervous shock. In this case they were making some 

 chemical change in the milk cell, and he would like to know 

 if Dr. Hope could tell them whether that change lessened 

 the nutritive value of the milk. 



Dr. E. W. HOPE (Liverpool) said he might at once reply 

 to the question of Dr. Marsden. There was no change 

 whatever in the quality of the milk so far as the most 

 careful observation by chemical tests, &c., went, and the 

 feeding of large numbers of kittens showed that they 

 flourished, if anything, rather more on the electrically steri- 

 lized milk than on ordinary milk. 



Dr. T. J. CLARKE (Malay States) said he had been rather 

 disappointed at not hearing anything except that which 

 related to the milk supplies of large cities. In the country 

 he came from they had one or two fairly lar.^e cities, but a 

 very large proportion of the population was in smaller 

 towns. Measures which could be adopted in large cities 

 were extremely difficult to adopt in those towns which he 

 had in his mind. They had no tuberculosis in any domestic 

 animal in the Malav States, and they had no surgical 



