FILTH AS infants' FOOD 83 



not due to the differences in the human and bovine 

 organisms, but mainly to conditions resulting from 

 our ignorance, to the highly dangerous and unscientific 

 manner in which we permit the production and dis- 

 tribution of milk to be carried on. The dangers which 

 we are to consider under this head are very much 

 greater and more numerous than those which are the 

 inevitable result of the use of a substitute for the 

 natural food of the infant, and which we can scarcely 

 hope ever to wholly avoid. But while they are more 

 numerous and more frequently fatal, they have this 

 hopeful feature: they can all be successfully com- 

 bated whenever enough civic interest has been awak- 

 ened to a recognition of peril and remedy to insure 

 the earnest and intelligent cooperation in remedial 

 effort of all the forces in society. Parents cannot 

 accomplish the task alone and unaided; physicians 

 cannot do it; farmers and milk dealers cannot do 

 it ; it cannot be done by the governing bodies of our 

 cities and states, or of the nation itself. But all these 

 forces combined, earnestly and wisely working to- 

 gether, can do it; and so bring about one of the 

 greatest triumphs of life over death, of health over 

 disease, ever accotoplished in the whole stretch of 

 human history. 



But before there can be any effective movement 

 aiming at the attainment of this noble ideal the nature 

 of the evils to be attacked must be known; before 



