NEW YORK MILK COMMITTEE 109 



after all. They prescribe it in the hospitals, and they add 

 lactic acid bacilli to milk to make it sour. In cheese making 

 it is used regularly in the milk before the milk has curdled, in 

 order, later on, to ripen the cheese. The cheese at first is 

 tough and hard, but these bacteria are present in it, and after 

 a week or perhaps three months depending on the temper- 

 ature, that cheese softens up and becomes ripe. It becomes 

 ripe because of the growth of these bacteria and the action of 

 the enzymes. 



Now, these bacteria are perhaps not very harmful, and per- 

 haps not at all, but we run one chance in ten, perhaps, that 

 those bacteria are putrefactive ones. Now, we hear a great 

 deal about ptomaine poisoning. That is what it is the prod- 

 ucts of putrefactive organisms of various kinds, and we have 

 all kinds in this milk, and we do not know when we are getting 

 one or when the other, but they are there and they are produc- 

 ing putrefaction in the milk, and it is that putrid milk that 

 does the harm. A healthy individual might get along very 

 well on one or two doses of putrid milk, and receive no harm 

 from it. We eat, sometimes, "gamy" food "gamy" birds of 

 various kinds, but no physician would ever prescribe that for 

 a nephritic. Nevertheless, a healthy individual could take it, 

 but it would not be a good diet for every day in the year. It 

 is the same way with some of those odorous cheeses. You 

 would not prescribe one as a regular diet, but you perhaps take 

 one to-day and another one a few days from now. Nobody 

 would prescribe limburger cheese, for instance, as -a continu- 

 ous diet. 



Now, there are in such foods the products of putrefaction, 

 and when we feed that material to babies, we run a chance of 

 killing them. In the winter time, perhaps, it is less dangerous 

 than in the summer time when the heat commences to worry 

 them, and, perhaps, a worrisome tooth is commencing to come 

 through. 



They cannot withstand these things in their food so well. 

 You know how a little worrying will even stop digestion, for 

 the rest of the day, and cause a headache and bad humor. 

 The same thing happens with a child. If a child has teeth 

 coming through, or something of that kind that disturbs it, it 

 is in an abnormal condition. Give such a baby putrid milk 



