Part 10

Dr. Strong shook his head. “Hardly proof,” he said. “Really clean milk will keep much longer. I have drunk milk from the Rochester municipal supply that was thirteen days old, and as sweet as possible. And that was in a hot August.”

“Thirteen days old! I’d be ashamed to tell it!” declared Grandma Sharpless, with so much asperity that there was a general laugh, in which the doctor joined.

“I shouldn’t care to try it with your milk. It is rich, but it isn’t by any means pure. Eternal vigilance is the price of good milk. I don’t suppose you inspect your farm once a month, do you, Mr. Clyde?”

“No; I leave that to the farmer. He’s an intelligent fellow. What’s wrong?”

“Scientifically speaking, from 300,000 to 500,000 bacteria per cubic centimeter.”

“Do we drink all those things when we have a glass of milk, Dr. Strong?” inquired “Manny” Clyde, the oldest boy.

“Four or five times that many for every teaspoonful,” said the doctor. “But it isn’t as bad as it sounds, Manny. One hundred thousand is considered a fairly safe allowance, though very good milk—the kind I drank when it was thirteen days old—may contain only two or three thousand. When the count runs up to half a million or so, it shows that some kind of impurity is getting in. The bacteria in your milk may not be disease germs at all; they may all be quite harmless varieties. But sooner or later, if dirt gets into milk, dangerous germs will get in with it. The high count is a good danger signal.”

“If Bliss, the farmer, has been allowing dirt to get into the milk, he’ll find himself out of a place,” said Mr. Clyde decisively.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” advised the doctor. “His principal fault is that he’s getting the milk dirty trying to keep it clean. He is washing his cans with water from an open well near the barnyard. The water in the well is badly contaminated from surface drainage. That would account for the high number of bacteria; that and careless milking.”

“And on that account you advise me to give up the milk?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“Only temporarily. There are other more immediate considerations. For one thing, there are both diphtheria and typhoid near by, and the people on the farm are in contact with them. That’s dangerous. You see, milk under favorable conditions is one of the best cultures for germs that is known. They flourish and multiply in it past belief. The merest touch of contamination may spread through a whole supply, like fire through flax. One more thing: one of your cows, I fear, is tuberculous.”

“We might pasteurize, I suppose,” suggested Mrs. Clyde anxiously.

Dr. Strong returned a decisive negative. “Pasteurized milk is better than poisoned milk,” he said; “but it’s a lot worse than good raw milk. Pasteurizing simply means the semi-cooking of all the varieties of germs, good and bad. In the process of cooking, some of the nutritive quality is lost. To be sure, it kills the bad germs, but it also kills the good ones.”

“Do you mean that some of the germs are actually useful?” asked Mrs. Clyde.

“Very useful, in certain rôles. For example, the lactic acid bacteria would be unpopular with you, Mrs. Clyde, because they are responsible for the souring of milk. But they also perform a protective work. They do their best to destroy any bacilli of disease which may invade their liquid home. Now, when you pasteurize, you kill all these millions of defenders; and any hostile germs that come along afterward and get into the milk, through dust or other mediums, can take possession and multiply without hindrance. Therefore pasteurized milk ought to be guarded with extra care after the process, which it seldom is. I once visited a large pasteurizing plant which made great boasts of its purity of product, and saw flies coming in from garbage pail and manure heap to contaminate the milk in the vats; milk helpless to protect itself, because all its army of defense had been boiled to death.”

“If we are allowed neither to use our farm milk raw nor to pasteurize it, what shall we do with it?” inquired Mr. Clyde.

“Full directions are in there,” answered Dr. Strong, pointing to an envelope on his desk. “If you’ll look over what I’ve written, and instruct your farmer to follow it out, you’ll have milk that is reasonably good. I’ll go further than that; it will be even good enough to give to the babies of the tenements, if you should have any left over.”

Mr. Thomas Clyde proceeded to rub his chin, with some degree of concentration, whereby Dr. Strong knew that his hint had struck in.

“Meantime,” said Mrs. Clyde, with a trace of sarcasm, “do you expect us to live on condensed milk?”

“Not at all; on certified milk.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Miss Julia, who had a thirst for information.

“What’s a certificate, Junkum?” retorted the doctor.

“That’s what I get when I pass my examinations.”

“Right! Well, milk coming from a farm that passes all its examinations gets a certificate from the Medical Society, which keeps a pretty constant watch over it. The society sees that all the cattle are tested for tuberculosis once in so often; that the cows are brushed off before milking; that the milking is done through a cloth, through which no dirt or dust can pass, into a can that has been cleaned by steam—not by contaminated water—so that no germs will remain alive in it; then cooled and sealed up and delivered. From the time the milk leaves the cow until it comes on your table, it hasn’t touched anything that isn’t germ-proof. That is the system I have outlined in the paper for your farmer.”

“It sounds expensive,” commented Mrs. Clyde.

“Yes; that is the drawback. Certified milk costs from fifteen to twenty cents a quart. But when you consider that nearly half the dead babies were poisoned by bad milk it doesn’t seem so expensive, does it?”

“All very well for us,” said Mr. Clyde thoughtfully. “We can afford it. But how about the thousands who can’t?”

“There’s the pity of it. Theoretically every city should maintain a milk standard up to the requirements of the medical certification, and allow no milk to be sold which falls short of that. It’s feasible, and it could be done at a moderate price if we could educate the farmer to it. Copenhagen’s milk supply is as good as the best certified milk in this country, because the great Danish Milk Company cooperates with the farmer, and doesn’t try to make huge profits; and its product sells under five cents a quart. But, to answer your question, Mr. Clyde: even a family of very moderate means could afford to take enough certified milk for the baby, and it would pay in doctor’s bills saved. Older children and grown-ups aren’t so much affected by milk.”