MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY STATISTICS AS INFLUENCED 
BY MILK. 
By J. M. Eager, 
I 
i 
* 
Assistmit Surgeon-General , Fuhlic Health and Marine-Hospital Service. 
The influence of milk on morbidity and mortality furnishes a 
striking example of the potency for evil of a thing designed for the 
accomplishment of good. The food of the new-born and the most 
important aliment of the sick and the aged becomes too often a pro- 
moter of disease and an instrument of death. This malign influence 
of impure milk or milk improperly used is made evident by the 
mournful proofs of the extensive and growing statistics on the 
subject. 
QUANTITIES OF MILK CONSUMED. 
The importance of the role played by milk in the causation of 
disease is emphasized when attention is draAvn to the enormous 
quantities of milk consumed. Based on the Twelfth Census of the 
United States taken in the year 1900, the milk and cream sold in 1899 
by farmers, deducting the quantities purchased by butter and cheese 
factories and condensed-milk establishments, was equivalent to about 
740,000,000 gallons of milk. This quantity of milk consumed b}^ the 
nonfarming population in a single year was as great as the quantity 
of water supplied to the city of Washingion in about ten da}^s. The 
average quantity of milk purchased by the urban and suburban popu- 
lation of the United States is 23 gallons a year for each person. The 
consumption of milk in Philadelphia during the year 1905 was esti- 
mated at 23 gallons for each inhabitant; and in London, England, 
during the year 1892, at 11.5 gallons. 
MILK AND DISEASE. 
Health may be influenced by cow’s milk either because the milk is 
I physiologically unsuitable, as for infant feeding, or because it has 
I become a medium of infection. Milk of inferior nutritiA^e A^alue can 
not be without its effect on the health of the consumer, especially when 
( used as a food for babes. This effect is difficult to show statistically. 
( 235 ) 
