REMEDIAL THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS 183 



cally all such contracts insist upon a certain standard 

 of composition, that used by the Department of 

 Agriculture being frequently adopted. In some cases 

 there is also a bacteriological standard stipulating 

 that the milk supplied must not contain more than 

 a certain maximum of bacteria, the number ranging 

 from 100,000 to 500,000 per cubic centimeter. There 

 seems to be no good reason why this should not 

 become a municipal function. 



Why should not every town and city in which there 

 is need for it have a municipal farm, stocked with 

 perfectly healthy cattle, and conducted upon scientific 

 principles throughout, for the supply of all its public 

 institutions now depending upon a commercial 

 product of very doubtful purity at best? Indeed, 

 there is no apparent reason why the municipality 

 should not supply from its farm those institutions of 

 a public character not conducted by the city, such 

 as hospitals, maternities, creches, kindergartens, diet 

 kitchens, and all similar philanthropically conducted 

 institutions, in which the purity of the milk supply 

 is a matter of vital importance. Such milk could 

 and should be supplied at cost. 



Now, this is not a theoretical proposition, novel 

 as it may appear to many American readers, but one 

 that has been thoroughly tested in actual practice 

 in several European cities. For example, the city 

 of Nottingham, England, keeps about a hundred 



