16 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 



without increasing the price of the product to an extent 

 that would limit its use. It became more and more evident 

 that freedom of the municipal supplies of milk from 

 pathogenic organisms could never be insured by inspection 

 at the point of production. These two facts indicated to 

 every opened-minded person the necessity of pasteurization 

 of milk. The medical profession is on the one hand the most 

 radical group and on the other the most conservative. As a 

 group the medical men could see no use, no advantage, in the 

 pasteurization of milk and until the process was favored by 

 the physicians, its extension was slow. 



The work done from 1894 to 1900 laid the foundation for 

 the rational pasteurization of milk and cream. It involved 

 a study of the effect of heat on the physical properties of 

 milk and a study of the resistance of the tubercle organism 

 to heat. It was shown that milk could be so treated as to 

 insure its freedom from pathogenic organisms and yet retain 

 its original chemical and physical properties to such an extent 

 as not to make it undesirable from the standpoint of the 

 distributor or the consumer. The development of the pasteur- 

 izing process has been along the lines that were laid down 

 in the first publication on this subject from the Wisconsin 

 Experiment Station. Many of the facts discovered and the 

 points emphasized did not exert the influence they deserved 

 to exert. They were rediscovered by later workers at a time 

 when the world was ready to accept them. This is the fate 

 of the pioneer in science. 



At the time Dean Russell came to the Experiment Station, 

 research work on the factors concerned in the production of 

 cheddar cheese was being carried on under the leadership 

 of Dr. S. M. Babcock. The first bacteriological paper in this 

 field, Gas-Producing Bacteria and the Relation of the Same to 

 Cheese, was published in the report of the Experiment Station 

 for 1895. This was quickly followed by other papers dealing 

 with the bacterial flora of cheese and their role in the ripen- 

 ing of cheese and the importance of the quality of milk in the 

 cheese industry. The development of the Wisconsin Curd Test 

 gave to the cheese maker a means of testing the milk delivered 



