ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 121 



thoroughly instilled in the minds of those who study them, and it will 

 take undoubtedly a number of years before the information gets into the 

 minds of the men who are actually concerned in the production of milk. 

 Now this talk is, of course, of practical importance to the dairyman, 

 because he is the man who is concerned in the production of milk, and if 

 I can speak in a way which would convince him of the necessity of caring 

 for his milk, not only after drawn from the animal but even before drawn 

 from the animal, for the possibility of bacteriological contamination in 

 milk is not alone to be dealt with after drawn, but should be taken into 

 consideration before. 



Some of these bacteria which we find in milk are favorable; some of 

 them are good and some bad; many of them are indifferent. It is not wise 

 for us to decry these organisms from this point of view. 



You take the man who is producing milk for the purposes of milk 

 supplying, and to this man the bacteria are more or less undesirable. If 

 you can reduce the germ content of milk to the lowest possible existence 

 you improve its quality. If for butter making purposes or manufacture 

 of cheese, it is absolutely necessary that you have some germ life. The 

 question of practical import is, how to control it? 



Now as milk is secreted in the body of the animal and it is made in 

 the glands of the udder, it contains no germ life in the milk of a healthy 

 cow. There is no germ life there as it is secreted. That milk as it is 

 drawn is perfectly sterile, perfectly free from germ life. It does become 

 contaminated to some extent during the process of withdrawal, but the 

 number of germs drawn from the animal is relatively small which exist 

 in milk when we consume it on the table or take it to the factory to be 

 worked up into dairy products. The conditions in milk permit of the 

 exceeding rapid development of these organisms, so that from a numeri- 

 cal point of view we have simply a large amount of this germ life under 

 ordinary conditions. Take a glass of milk such as you have on the table 

 and make a bacteriological examination of it and the number of organisms 

 of living cells which are actualy present in a glass of milk of ordinary, 

 normal character, would exceed in number the number of human beings 

 on the surface of the globe, measured as they are in hundreds of millions. 

 Now we naturally shrink from a statement of that sort, and think that 

 this large amount of germ life must produce some bad effects on our 



