18 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCJENCES 
There are many reasons why milk should receive special consideration. 
In a large sense there is no food so absolutely essential to our well-being 
as a people. It is the most readily assimilated of all foods. It is nature’s 
food for the young of all mama!"'. It . is the most easily adulterated food, 
and the adulteration is frequently the most difficult to detect. It is one 
of the greatest absorbents of disagreeable and poisonous gases and odors. 
If not properly cared for it soon deteriorates and under certain condi- 
tions tox-albumens are formed which render it dangerous. It is a verit- 
able paradise for bacteria. Every drop of water that touches the milk 
furnishes its quota; every time that warm milk is exposed to the air, new 
micro-organisms find their home in the milk, and multiply with a rapidity 
that discounts the most incredible fairy story. 
When once pathogenic germs get into milk an epidemic is started so 
quickly that we are scarcely able to cope with it. In case of typhoid 
epidemics, experts first direct their attention to the milk supply. This 
evil, as is the spreading of all other infectious diseases, is due to negli- 
gence, ignorance and carelessness, and a lack of proper supervision. The 
magnitude . of this crime is appalling \Yhen we tixink of the number of 
very young children whose health is permanently injured, and the number 
whose lives are evidently lost by such adulterated food. 
No one knows how much misery is produced, nor how many lives are 
lost when adulterated milk is administered to the sick. 
The infants of today are the men and women of tomorrow. Our fore- 
fathers were stronger and hardier than we. One reason for this was 
certainly because they drank purer milk and 'purer water and. breathed 
purer air. 
The man who mixes glucose worth tw’o cents a pound with honey 
w^orth twelve cents a pound practices deception and fraud, but there is 
no physicial injury done the custom^er. The glucose is just as wholesome 
as the honey. But the man who puts formaldehyde or any other preserv- 
ative that injures its digestibility into the milk destroys the vitality of 
the nation. 
Since milk is the most delicate food and fills such a large and 
important place in the basic demands for the sustenance and growth of 
our bodies, it of necessity requires a corresponding delicate care in hand- 
ling in order to accomplish the expected results. In fact, the care of 
mJlk demands more than a passing consideration. It is the place to 
.emphasize skill in manipulation, to use exquisite methods of cleanliness, 
and to focus all the knowledge that science has given us. 
The average farmer spends a great deal of time each day in w^ashing 
and grooming his fine horses, and he is to be commended for it. At the 
same tim.e his cows receive little or no attention of this kind, while their 
bodies reek with the accumulation of dust, dirt and filth. This is wwong. 
The health and happiness of thousands are dependent upon the well 
groomed cow, the well kept barnyard, the clean barn, well lighted and 
ventilated , and supplied w ith an abundance of pure w^ater. 
The progress and intelligence of the twentieth century will not permit 
'this evil to exist. Let us look at things just as they are and measure them 
according to their value. When a square deal is in effect with those 
things that nave to do with tne essential elements of our civilization and 
our well-being as free moral agents, the science of preparing pure milk 
