No. 4.] GRADING OF MILK. 173 



Mr. NiCKERSON. I am chairman of the board of health of 

 my town. Now one question was asked about the boards of 

 health; I am going to say here publicly that if you do not like 

 your board of health and they do not use you right, get rid 

 of them; you can do it, there is no trouble at all; you go to 

 the voters, to the people in your town, and show them they 

 are not doing right, and they will fire them. They did it in 

 our town and I had to take the job. I didn't want to, but I 

 was in the fight and I took it. I simply say this as a byword. 

 I was against pasteurization. I thought that it spoiled the 

 milk for children. In attending these lectures I heard Dr. 

 North at the Grange and was very anxious to hear him again, 

 because I wanted to get it thoroughly drilled into me. If we 

 can pasteurize as small dealers, I think it is a good thing, and 

 I wanted him to bring it out. I believe, as I go more into 

 health matters, as I am obliged to now, that we can get rid of 

 a lot of these epidemics. 



Mr. BiXBY. In pasteurizing the milk, does that not have 

 some effect on its digestibility? Isn't it harder to digest? 



Dr. North. We are feeding 21,000 babies a day at the in- 

 fant milk depots in New York City. I have charge of the 

 production of that milk; it all comes from this Homer station. 

 When we first started feeding these children at these milk 

 stores that question which you asked was uppermost in the 

 minds of the doctors and nurses, because all of the milk now 

 pasteurized was at first raw, at their request; they told me 

 they could not use pasteurized milk for the feeding of these 

 babies because it would upset their digestion. Three months 

 went by and I produced this raw milk in those 29 tuberculin- 

 tested dairies, and at last I was called up by some of the 

 creameries who said that "an epidemic of diphtheria has 

 broken out among our producers and three of our farms have 

 got diphtheria. What shall we do?" I said, "Turn on the pas- 

 teurizer," which I had fortunately installed. The doctors in 

 charge of these babies had told me that it would upset their 

 stomachs, particularly if they were changed from raw to 

 pasteurized milk. I knew we were going to have a terrible 

 upset in New York City among the digestions of these children. 

 Five days went by and I waited for the reports to come in to 



