CHAPTER IV. 

 preserving /liMlfe bg Cbemicals. 



I have hesitated for some time to say anything on 

 this subject, because the preservation of milk by 

 chemicals, even if it were justifiable to practice it, is 

 not a procedure that in any manner or form should 

 be contemplated by those for whom I write, nor is it 

 in any way conducive of better results towards attain- 

 ing a milk with keeping qualities sufficiently pro- 

 nounced to serve all requirements, as the methods 

 which will anon be treated, such as cooling, Pasteur- 

 izing and sterilizing, and which are now conceded, 

 and justly so, to be the only methods which should 

 lawfully be countenanced anywhere. Yet when I 

 reflect that it is only by exposing the misuse of chem- ' 

 icals for preserving milk that a chance will offer 

 itself to dwell on the pernicious results which may 

 follow, it will be accorded that it may be best to show 

 all there is in it. 



Of the many and most frequently used ingredients '' 

 which have been adopted by the smaller retail milk 

 dealers, and are still used, to prevent or cover the im- 

 pending souring of milk (and often in the erroneous 

 supposition of retarding it), none are more generally 

 used than soda. By its admixture it is brought 

 about that the milk acid, formed from milk sugar by 

 the action of acidulating bacteria, is dulled and, con- 

 sequently, not perceptible to the organs of taste. 

 During this process the multiplication of germs in 



