38 CLEAN MILK 



All forms of disease conveyed by germs in milk to human 

 adults are as nothing in comparison with the damage wrought by 

 germ-laden milk upon infants. Cholera infantum, in fact, is but 

 another name for acute milk poisoning. Practically almost all the 

 cases of summer diarrhoea in babies are caused by germs in 'milk. 

 These are probably chiefly of the putrefactive type which enter 

 milk from manure on the cow. Indeed, in some localities from 40 

 to 60 per cent, of the deaths in infants from all causes result from 

 dirty milk. The wonderful reduction in the death rate of infants 

 in some of our large cities — which is one of the remarkable signs- 

 of modern progress — has been brought about solely by the recogni- 

 tion of this fact. 



This reduction is directly traceable to the use of pure milk 

 or, where this is not obtainable, to pasteurizing milk, during which 

 the growth of germs is killed or checked. Violent and often fatal 

 poisoning, resembling cholera, is produced by a substance (tyro- 

 toxicon) formed by certain germs in milk kept in dirty, covered 

 vessels during hot weather. The same poison has sometimes been 

 found in cheese, cream and ice cream and has also caused fatal re- 

 sults. 



Tyrotoxicon is a ptomaine or chemical product due to the 

 splitting up or putrefaction of milk-products by bacteria of the colon 

 group. In ice cream the number of germs is often many times that 

 common to milk or cream. This follows because the cream is often 

 pasteurized, which kills the harmless lactic acid bacteria, and the 

 cream is kept at a low temperature which allows other germs to grow 

 which are harmful. 26 million germs were found on an average in 

 the quarter teaspoonful in the examination of 263 samples of ice 

 cream.* Streptococci are found (80%) twice as frequently as in 

 milk. Storing ice cream does not lessen the number of germs but 



* Ice cream is usually due to a toxin produced by the paratyphoid or typhoid- 

 colon group of bacteria (B. enteritidis or B. paratyphi), which may occur in the 

 feces of normal cows. Fecal contamination of milk is thus the immediate cause. 



