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16
above 60 degrees Fahrenheit. More or less efficient cooling provision
is made nowadays alt most dairy farms, but the full churns are still
generally taken to the railway station in open carts unprotected from
the sun's heat; advantages are not always taken of the railway Company's
concession for the use of sealed chums, and when the churns
arrive at railway junctions one finds no cool sheds provided in which
they can be placed for the possible hour or two of their broken
journey ; indeed, they are generally left fully exposed to the sun on the
open platform, and the good fruits of the previous refrigeration are
enormously discounted as a consequence.
All along the line, therefore, there is need for reform, and for
reforms which the trade itself should initiate. But although I am
confident of great advances in the near future, I do not expect to' see
such a measure of improvement as would lead me to recommend the
feeding of infants with raw milk in the summer months, when Pasteurisation
appeals to me as a measure of enormous Public Health
value ; and as the contamination of the milk in the home is a circumstance,
which in my opinion is responsible for much of the evil
consequences of the consumption of raw milk in the summer months,
I am confident that before long all milk will be sold in bottles, for it
represents an important advance in the right direction, when the
proper means are provided, and the necessary precautions taken for
thoroughly cleansing the bottles and filling them ait head-quarters.
It has often occurred to me as a most discreditable circumstance
in our sanitary administration that the legal powers which it is competent
for any rural sanitary authority to execute, have either been
so ignored or badly administered, that in the rural districts, where
the bulk of our milk comes from, there exists practically nothing
worthy of the name of a sanitary supervision of dairy farms. In consequence,
the better milk dealers have had to step into the breach,
and in order to protect themselves and their customers from the
consequences of the neglect of the proper authorities, have to take