MILK-BORNE DISEASES 121 



that 'long, campaign against "swill milk" which cul- 

 minated in. the, enactment of laws against adultera- 

 tion by the. state legislature, in 1864.-* That was 

 OUT first great public .agitation for pure. milk. Hartley 

 found that the babies of the tenements died at an 

 astonishing rate, and his soul rebelled against what 

 he termed the "frightful waste of human material." 

 He iraced the connection between the death-rate of 

 infants and the conditions in which cows were kept 

 throughout the state. He found that the cows were 

 housed in unsanitary stables and fed upon distillery 

 refuse. He wondered what sort of milk could be 

 obtained from cows so housed and fed. He found in 

 one place " in low flat pens over 500 milch cows closely 

 huddled together, inhumanly condemned to subsist 

 on slops smoking hot from the stills," and wondered 

 what sort of milk could be produced from " this un- 

 natural, disgusting food." He found that the dis- 

 tillers "would not risk the lives of their own families 

 by using the produce of their own dairies," but that 

 twenty-five thousand babies in the tenements were 

 fed upon it, nevertheless.^ 



Hartley at once began an investigation. The death- 

 rate of babies was high, frightfully so. It had kept 

 on increasing for a number of years, though foreign 

 cities reported a decrease in the infantile death-rate. 

 Was it a mere coincidence that the period of increasing 

 infantile mortality was coincident with the increase 



