PUEE versm purified milk 255 



tic acid bacteria into the milk.*' It will thus be ?,een 

 that the advocates of pasteurization admit that the 

 process destroys bacteria which may be very useful 

 to the consumer of milk. It must be remembered, 

 however, that the advocates of pasteurization do 

 not disguise the fact that pasteurization is a necessary 

 evil in their judgment; that milk whicfr^eeded no 

 such treatment would be far better. It is the famil- 

 iar case of enduring the lesser evil to be rid of the 

 greater. 



In view of the fact that diseases of the digestive 

 system are responsible for a terrible proportion of 

 infantile deaths, it is fairly obvious that if pasteur- 

 ized milk were more difl&cult to digest than raw 

 milk, the mortality from intestinal troubles among 

 infants fed upon it would be above the average 

 greater than the mortality among infants fed upon 

 raw milk. This would undoubtedly be the result — 

 unless there were other advantages which more tkafi 

 compensated for this serious disadvantage. And should 

 there be such a balance of advantage it would, of 

 course, justify pasteurization and destroy much of 

 the force of the criticism. The issue must be decided 

 by an appeal to fact rather than to theory. 



Now, what are the facts? Is the mortality from 

 diseases of the digestive system greater among infants 

 fed upon pasteurized milk than among infants fed 

 upon raw milk ? In this, as in so many other matters, 



