10 
GEORGE H. BAILEY. 
other diseases, as hydrophobia, variola, glanders, syphilis, and 
cholera. 
As it would be trifling with time to discuss the imminent 
danger of inhaling the dry dust of the sputa from consumptive 
men and animals, I pass at once to the consideration of the dan¬ 
ger from milk, the great food product of the human race. I 
assume that the first thing that ever passed our lips was milk, 
either derived from our good mothers, or the “ family cow,” and 
while we shall always retain a reverence for both (perhaps not 
equally divided), they will always remain associated with our 
rock-a-bye-baby days, while life will be far too short to ever 
efface from our memories the nursery story of the “ cow that 
jumped over the moon,” which acrobatic performance still re¬ 
mains the “ best on record.” The ordinary ijaspection of milk 
brought into our cities demands that its average composition 
shall be water 87 per cent, and solids 13 per cent., the solids in¬ 
cluding fat, casein, milk sugar, albumen and ash ; the casein 
and albumen containing nitrogen, of special value in cheese 
making, and the fat for butter. The water contains most every¬ 
thing from pollywogs to bacteria, which immediately after milk¬ 
ing may vary from zero to over 10,000,000 in a single cubic inch 
of milk, depending almost entirely upon the temperature at 
which the milk is kept. The influence of temperature on the 
growth of bacteria is well known, and all milk should be kept 
below 50° F. until sterilized or consumed. Judging from tests 
thus far made abroad, city milk which contains not more than 
three or four million bacteria per cubic centimeter may be re¬ 
garded as exceptionally good for European cities, while consid¬ 
erably over two hundred distinct types of ordinary milk bacteria 
have been described in literature up to the present time. Milk 
as it exists in the udder of a healthy cow is germ free, that is, it 
is practically sterile ; but the milk that comes to the consumer 
-contains a large number of living germs. Dr. Freeman, of New 
York, pathologist to the foundling hospital, in the Medical 
Record^ gave a practical demonstration of the extent of this con- 
-±amination. Three petri plates, three and one-half inches in 
