THE PASTEURIZATION OF MILK 



dealers that milk which was old and liable to be- 

 come a commercial loss on account of souring 

 could be saved if it were heated, and that the fer- 

 mentation due to the growth of the enormous num- 

 ber of bacteria in milk could thus be checked. 

 Milk which had been handled in an unclean man- 

 ner, or which had been badly cooled by insuffi- 

 cient icing, or which it became necessary to hold 

 for a long time before sale, could still be made 

 marketable by rapidly heating and cooling it. Lit- 

 tle attention, however, was paid to the matter of a 

 uniform heating of the milk, or to the exact degree 

 of temperature to which it was subjected. Almost 

 no attention was directed to the destruction of 

 pathogenic bacteria. These, in fact, were little un- 

 derstood by the milk dealers, and few dealers main- 

 tained laboratories for studying milk problems. 



On account of the questionable motives which 

 actuated dealers in adopting this method of milk 

 treatment, as well as the faulty methods employed, 

 health authorities, as a rule, at first looked upon 

 the pasteurization of milk with disfavor. It was 

 considered that the process was a makeshift and 

 simply used as a means of covering up bad prac- 

 tices in the production and handling of milk. In- 

 14 



