68 MILK [vi 



ing certain ripening processes in cheese manufacture. 

 We want, therefore, as much information as to how 

 we can best foster these kinds of fermentation as can 

 possibly be obtained. If the information we already 

 possess regarding these minute workers in the dairy 

 is meagre, we must recollect that it is always being- 

 added to, and that its value is great. 



Milk as a Propagator of Disease. There 

 is another aspect of milk, considered from a bac- 

 teriological point of view, which merits attention, 

 viz. the risk it runs of acting as the propagator of 

 various kinds of disease. The peculiarly rich pro- 

 perties of milk as a food renders it admirably adapted 

 for forming a nutritive medium for the development 

 of various disease (the so-called pathogenic) germs, 

 which are constantly to be found, along with other 

 micro-organisms, in the air and elsewhere. There can 

 be no doubt whatever that such diseases as typhus, 

 diphtheria, cholera, and, above all, consumption, which 

 are caused by germ life, are too often disseminated 

 in this way. Indeed, it would seem highly prob- 

 able that a very large quantity of milk used is infected 

 with the tubercular bacillus (see note a , p. 113), and 

 that in this way the seeds of that most insidious of 

 all diseases, consumption, is implanted in the system, 

 more especially in the case of children. According 

 to certain authorities, about 5 per cent of the samples 

 of town milk contain tubercular bacilli. As to the 



