594 
warning that heated milk may subsequently develop poisonous prop- 
erties for infants, has no objection to the heating of milk for the use 
of adults and children above the age of 3 years. 
The question naturally arises, Is the danger from the use of the 
average raw market milk really a serious one? Our investigations® 
in Washington have shown that the general market milk is, for the 
most part, old, stale and dirty (last year the milk averaged over 22,- 
000,000 bacteria per cubic centimeter, and this year over 11,000,000), 
and further, that at least 10 per cent of the cases of typhoid fever 
which occurred during the summer of 1906 in Washington were cer- 
tainly attributable to contaminated milk. Similar conditions have 
been found in other cities wherever the matter has been investigated. 
In addition to typhoid fever, the milk frequently conveys the infec- 
tion of tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, diarrhoeal and other 
diseases. One needs only to refer to other parts of this bulletin to 
assure himself of the amount of death and disease caused by impure 
milk. That phase of the subject therefore needs no further emphasis 
here. 
The average commercial milk of large cities is not a safe food. 
The principal reason for this is the ignorance and indifference of 
those engaged in the dairy business, filthy barns, unclean and un- 
healthy cows, improper care of containers, insufficient cooling of the 
milk, long transportation, unnecessary and frequent handling, im- 
perfect cleaning ahd lack of sterilization of the bottles, and the fre- 
quent close association with contagious disease. 
The difficulty of obtaining a clean fresh milk supply is soon 
appreciated when we investigate the subject in any large city. For 
instance, in Washington the milk supply comes from over 1,000 
different dairy farms, situated in the surrounding counties of Vir- 
ginia and Maryland. v Some of the cream comes from distant points 
in Pennsylvania and New York. Boston gets a large part of its 
milk supply from distances of 40 to 100 miles. The milk supply 
of the city of New York is produced at 35,000 farms scattered over 
5 different States, passes through 400 creameries, and comes over 12 
different lines, of transportation. Some of the milk, at certain sea- 
sons, reaches New York from Canada, and shipments of cream arrive 
daily from Ohio. One hundred and fifty wholesale dealers are en- 
gaged in the business and the retail stores number 12,000, the daily 
consumption being 1,500,000 quarts. From this extreme case we will 
find every grade of complexity down to the small village and the 
individual farmhouse where fresh milk may be obtained twice daily. 
®B,osenau, Lumsden, and Kastle, Bull. 35, Hvg. Lab., U. S. Pub. Health & 
Mar.-Hosp. Sery., Wash., 361 pp. 
