TILTH AS infants' FOOD 95 



stagnant pool containing a liberal infusion of manure. 

 Very deliberately he draws up a pail of water from the 

 well and rinses out his milk pails once more, this time 

 to cool them. Now Bill comes to the shed : if you ask 

 him whether the pails are clean he will tell you that 

 they are. Most assuredly they are, for did you not 

 see him wash the pails, first with hot water and then 

 with cold? How could you expect poor Bill, who 

 doesn't know a bacterium from an elephant, to know 

 that his pails are not really clean; that in the angles and 

 spaces where they are seamed — for you note that 

 the pails are very badly made — there are thousands, 

 probably millions, of bacteria? 



Bill's clothes are dirty, it is true, but you cannot 

 doubt that Bill himself is an unusually clean sort of a 

 person. Did you not see that when he rinsed his pails 

 with the cold water he was careful also to rinse his 

 hands in the water before throwing it out? True, 

 he wiped his hands upon the sides of the legs of his 

 trousers, just as he later wiped his nose with the back 

 of his hand, but, like chewing tobacco, which Bill 

 also does while he works, these are just habits which 

 concern Bill and Bill only. When he has properly 

 and comfortably seated himself upon a milking stool 

 which is filthy, saturated with dirt and teeming with 

 bacteria. Bill moistens his hands with spittle and be- 

 gins milking. In the case of the first cow, you observe 

 that he lets the first "draw" go to waste upon the 



