CHAPTER V 



DISEASE GERMS IN MILK 



THERE is a wide-spread feeling that the bacteria in milk are 

 closely associated with the distribution of diseases. 1 This idea 

 is undoubtedly well founded, but in the minds of most people 

 it is too indefinite to have much meaning, and its very indef- 

 initeness gives rise to erroneous impressions. The simple fact 

 that milk contains bacteria does not render it dangerous to 

 drink, nor that it contains large numbers of bacteria. It has 

 been known for many years that sour milk is a perfectly health- 

 ful product, and physicians, to-day, frequently recommend sour 

 milk or buttermilk as a diet for invalids or infants. 2 Now, 

 for reasons that we have already noticed, it is perfectly 

 clear that buttermilk and sour milk will contain bacteria 

 in enormous numbers. Buttermilk may frequently contain 

 as many as 500,000,000 bacteria per c.c., and sour milk 

 will contain them, sometimes, in equal quantity. The fact 

 that these beverages, with such enormous numbers of bacteria, 

 are perfectly healthful and wholesome, is a clear indication that 

 the simple presence of bacteria in milk is not the fact which 

 renders it suspicious, or in any degree less wholesome. 3 Indeed, 

 buttermilk is frequently recommended as a diet because it con- 

 tains such large numbers of bacteria. It clearly follows that the 

 impression which many people have that large numbers of 

 bacteria render milk dangerous is a mistaken one. Any attempt 

 to determine the healthfulness or the harmfulness of milk based 

 upon the number of bacteria which it contains is, therefore, 

 fallacious. 



i Busey and Kober. Rep. Health Off. of Dist. Col., 1895. 

 3 De Mattos. Jahrb. f. Kinderheilk., LV., p. 1 



Salge. Jahrb. f. Kinderheilk., LY., p. 157. 

 3 Bienstock. Ann. 1'Inst. Past., XIV., p. 750, 1900. 



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