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27
Infected milk is a fertile source of Tuberculosis, and it can be
clearly shown to give rise to a large mortality from the disease
among infants. Sterilised milk can now be purchased, or parents
can protect their offspring and themselves in a very great measure
by using no milk which has not been previously well boiled. There
is a great prejudice in this country in favour of unboiled milk,
whereas in Italy it is quite rare for an adult to touch milk which
has not been boiled. Children take to boiled milk just as kindly as
they do to the unboiled article, and those adults who do not prefer
it at the commencement very soon acquire the taste for it. But
after all this sterilisation of milk is only a makeshift remedy and the
truer aim of the prevention of tuberculosis is in the direction of
preventing the germ of the disease being conveyed in raw milk and
imperfectly cooked meat. Milk is the great offender ; of the samples
taken and examined in this country the records show that at least
10 per cent, of them contain the germ. When this fact is appreciated
by the public, among whom there are but few families which
have not had the exparience of the disease in some form or other to
serve as an object lesson, they will demand that this state of things
shall not be suffered to continue. That a necessary article of food,
and one on which the bulk of our infants are reared, should be
allowed to disseminate disease broadcast without any effectual
preventive measures being taken, is, without exception, the greatest
blot upon our sanitary administration of to-day. If a human enemy
were the cause of half this preventable annual slaughter from
tuberculosis it is not difficult to picture the tremendous alarm which
would seize upon the community, how every platform in the country
would be daily occupied by politicians and others in discussing the
various aspects of a theme of such dire import to one and all, and,
last but not least, the large expenditure which would be eagerly
voted by Parliament to secure an ultimate victory. But consumption
is an insidious foe, insidious in its onslaught and slow and
insidious in reaping its annual toll of deaths ; it does not impress the
public like the sudden onslaught of a foreign human foe; the public
moreover is comparatively ignorant and careless in protecting the
health of individuals, but it is well informed and always on the
alert in subjects affecting the national defence; it is too occupied
with the social and political schemes which, important as they are,
shrink into insignificance before the immeasurably greater subject