1 78 THOMPSON YATES LABORATORIES REPORT 
generalized tuberculosis and other diseases, the milk of which is sold to the public 
although it is dangerous to the health of man. This disregard of care would not be 
tolerated in any other article of consumption, as far as I am aware. 
If intelligent supervision is rendering the water supply of large towns above 
suspicion, surely we have a right to demand, and to insist upon, similar care in the case 
of the milk supply. As it is well known, milk dealers have recognized the danger of 
raw milk, and have long since taken to condensing and sterilizing and adding 
preservatives. In certain cases this departure has been a great boon, but it has been 
abused ; the condensed milk is not sterile, we do not know by its constituents 
whether bacterial products are there or not. Sterilized milk, unless the source is 
known, is no guarantee that the milk was pure to commence with. The addition of 
preservatives is in the vast majority of cases a cloak of the worst description, and 
ought to be as strenuously forbidden as it is in Germany. None of these methods 
strike at the root of the evil. Intelligent supervision at the place of production and 
during distribution is necessary. If the milk producers themselves do not brace 
themselves up and see that it is to their advantage to improve their supply and its 
keeping properties, municipal authorities must do so. In one or two large cities 
the municipality has undertaken the task in earnest and with most striking results. 
I quote from Liverpool: of 372 samples of milk taken from the Liverpool shippons, 
7 were tubercular, 41 contained B. coli, and 27 a gas-forming anaerobe; of 414 
railway-borne samples and therefore coming to Liverpool from a distance, 1 1 were 
tubercular, 105 contained B. coli, and 54 the gas-forming anaerobe. This shows 
that supervision in the case of the town shippons is beginning to have its effect, and 
that the milk has become purer than that from the country. The country-produced 
milk, with all the advantages which the country offers, is bad, for there is an almost 
total lack of organized supervision, and gallons of contaminated milk are allowed to 
find their way into vast populations to swell the chronic disease rate, the infant 
mortality, and the expenditure. 
But why, finally, should this work altogether be left to Corporations. Cannot 
the milk producers in a county, for instance like Cheshire, establish a laboratory 
where everything relating to milk may be studied ; where the best means of 
diagnosing tubercle may be investigated, where the purity of the milk may be 
checked, and where the best means of cleansing and sending out milk may be worked 
out. In Germany, the co-operation between the butchers and the authorities is 
very striking, and the butcher gains, for very little is wasted. 
The following case which has recently come under my notice shows the 
intolerable ignorance which still exists as regards the treatment of milk. Samples of 
milk were taken separately from the cows in a shippon, but instead of the milker 
washing his hands between each milking, he spits on them. Two of the samples 
of milk are returned as tubercular, by the guinea pig inoculation test, but subsequently 
