PASTEURIZATION 227 



Pasteurization has often been accused of possessing the 

 great disadvantage of producing scurvy and rickets. 

 There is certainly no evidence to show that low tempera- 

 ture pasteurization, such as is now recommended, ever in 

 itself induces scurvy. Hundreds of thousands of children 

 have been raised upon heated milk without the production 

 of this disease, which is comparatively rare, especially in 

 such countries as Germany and France where artificial 

 feeding with heated milk is most popular. Scurvy is readily 

 preventable and amenable to treatment. Rickets results 

 from defective ahmentation and improper hygiene that 

 cannot be laid at the doors of pasteurization. 



One of the great objections to the pasteurization of milk 

 is that it devitaHzes it. If milk contains "life," it has prob- 

 bably lost the last vestige of it after it is from twenty-four 

 to forty-eight hours old and kept under such conditions 

 that it contains myriads of bacteria. Ordinary market milk 

 is dead and partly decomposed before it reaches the con- 

 sumer. It has been shown that heating milk to 60° C. for 

 twenty minutes, while it kills the dangerous bacteria, does 

 not seriously afFect the enzymes, and these ferments are 

 the nearest approach to life with which we are familiar 

 in milk. In other words, pasteurization does not devitalize 

 milk any more than cooking devitalizes meat, vegetables, 

 or cereals. 



Another objection frequently urged against pasteuriza- 

 tion is that some of the poisonous toxines are not killed at 

 the temperatures used. We do not even know the nature of 

 these poisonous products in milk, much less their thermal 

 death-points. The true bacterial toxines are all rendered 

 inactive by heating to a temperature of 60° C. for twenty 

 minutes. Further, it must be remembered that if milk 

 contains chemical poisons not destroyed by the heat of 

 pasteurization it will contain these same poisons if the milk 

 were consumed raw! In fact, the heating of the milk pre- 

 vents the further formation of such injurious substances. 



