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pasteurized. Are harmful bacteria in milk still to be fought
by sterilization and pasteurization, those ancient and retrograde
processes which are the salvation of the milkman, but
which render that fluid less nourishing to many infants and
actually harmful to some of them. Has not the hour arrived
when the observance of cleanliness and the laws c f health
should take the place of sterilizing dilute sewage, for this
is what much of the milk now sold really is? Do the Council
realize that there is a milk seller in their District who
imports large quantities of milk there and unblushingly
sterilizes it under the very noses of the Sanitary
Officials? Perhaps it kills the germs in it, or, at any rate,
sends to sleep those that are prone to render his milk unsaleable.
But he does not kill the poisons that have been formed
by these germs during transit, and he renders the milk by his
culinary operation most undesirable for and harmful to
infants. When milk has been sterilized or pasteurized, it
should be sold as sterilized or pasteurized milk, and not as
milk. Those who sell milk so treated without publicly announcing
the fact should be proceeded against for vending
an article which is not of the nature, substance and quality demanded
by the purchaser. Sterilized and pasteurized cows'
milk if given to infants for any length of time produces anaemia
and malnutrition in many and scurvy in some. Therefore
it there are no regulations in force by which the sale of such
doctored milk as milk can be prohibited, then it is advisable
in the interests of the Public Health that the necessary powers
should be obtained.
The death rate from Scarlatina in the district was .7
per cent., and the limited outbreak of Scarlet Fever, on which
I shall presently offer remarks, has created some little exclamation
in the Council Chamber. But what of the deaths
from Tubercle? How many of these 27 deaths, not to mention
the maimed and injured of which there is no account, can be
proved to be not due to Tuberculous Milk?
I should like the Council to take a very prominent part
in the reformation of the cowkeeper and the milk trade, a
reformation which is bound to come, and will come I hope at
no very distant date. At present the milk trade enjoys far