London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Bethnal Green 1905

Report on the sanitary condition and vital statistics during the year 1905

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30
tive value of the product, any action was not considered
advisable. So far as can be ascertained milk depots
on the Battersea plan cannot be made self-supporting,
and must entail a more or less heavy charge upon the
ratepayers. Moreover it is doubtful whether a Borough
Council may legally incur this expense. Ultimately
the Public Health Committee declined to entertain
Dr. Carpenter's proposal.
Journal of the Board of Agriculture.
PASTEURISED MILK.
The Board of Agriculture have received through the
Foreign Office a translation of an article by Dr. Ostertag,
which appeared in the Danish Monthly Review for
Veterinary Surgeons for August, 1905, dealing with the
question of pasteurised milk. Dr. Ostertag observes
that in the course of the last fifteen years it has been
repeatedly proposed in Germany that a law should be
passed prescribing that all milk sold for human consumption
should be pasteurised. Against this proposal
it was at first objected that it would be impossible to
carry it out, and, subsequently, as our knowledge of the
bacteriological and chemical properties of milk has
become more extensive, other objections of a sanitary
nature have been brought forward. It is now believed
that if milk is heated for pasteurisation in the ordinary
way, its condition becomes so much altered that instead
of being an article of nourishment it may become a
source of danger; and Dr. Ostertag adds that he does
not believe there exists at the present time any expert
who will recommend a general obligation for the