GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 7 



a prodigious rate, and hence the danger is sometimes very 

 great. 



Familiarity has dulled our senses even to the ethical side 

 of the milk question. Milk and questions concerning its 

 production are discussed in the parlor before young girls 

 just as frankly as we speak of the weather or the latest 

 styles. The fact that milk comes from the mammary 

 glands and is one of the secondary results of pregnancy are 

 scarcely realized by many city people, who only see milk 

 as it is served to them on the dining-room table. Equal 

 frankness with questions of sex hygiene and the venereal 

 peril would help solve these perplexing problems. 



Times and conditions have changed 



One frequently hears the remark: "Look at me; I am 

 hale and hearty at threescore and ten and have always been 

 fond of milk and taken it just as it comes, dirt, bacteria, 

 and all." Such persons forget three very important things. 

 The first is that the fruits of victory are not to be judged by 

 the survivors alone. We must have a roll of the killed and 

 wounded too. The sanitarian so often hears the argument, 

 "Look at me; it has not hurt me," that it is beginning to 

 tax his patience. If the health officer wants to close an 

 infected well, the grandfather points with patriarchal pride 

 to his hale old years and hearty health as proof that the 

 water can do no harm. We hear the same thing when it is 

 proposed to purify or filter the water of a polluted stream. 

 Only last winter, during the epidemic of typhoid fever in 



, the mayor of that city used this very argument. I 



once heard a mother of four children (all that remained of 

 ten) say, "Well, you cannot expect to raise them all." But 

 we do expect to raise them all nowadays, especially if they 

 can be nurtured upon fresh, clean, and safe milk. 



The second important thing which old folks seem to 

 forget is that conditions have greatly changed since they 

 were young. Then the milk was wagon-hauled to town and 



