milk is at once poured into sterile bottles, is
quickly cooled and shipped in ice to the substations where the
delivery wagon is waiting. In the ideal delivery wagon there are
shallow vats of ice in which the bottles are placed, thus permitting
the milk to reach the baby's home having all the while been kept at a
temperature just above the freezing point.

And why all this trouble? Why all this worry over temperature and
cleanliness? Babies were not so cared for in the days of our
grandmothers. The old-fashioned way of milking the cows with dirty
clothes and soiled hands, while cattle were more or less covered with
manure, with their tails switching millions of manure germs into the
milking pail, produced a milk laden not only with manure germs--the
one great cause of infantile diarrhea--but also swarming with numerous
other mischief making microbes. Even tuberculosis, that much dreaded
disease germ of early infancy, may come from the dairy hands as well
as from infected cows.

There used to be many dairymen like the old farmer who, when
interrogated by the health commissioner concerning the cleanliness of
his milk, laughed as he reached down into the bottom of a pail of
yellow milk and grabbing up a handful of manure and straw, said:
"That's what makes the youngsters grow." But it does not make them
grow; it often causes them to die, and even if they do live, they live
in spite of such contaminated food, for the germ which is always found
in the colon of the cow (_coli communis_), probably kills more babies
every year than any other single thing.

It is possible to reduce the growth of these germs by keeping the milk
at a very low temperature from the time it leaves the cow until the
moment it gets to the home refrigerator. Those which survive this
process of refrigeration may be quickly rendered harmless by
pasteurizing or sterilizing at the time of preparing baby's food.

In the absence of the modern sanitary dairy, we would suggest that the
milk supply be improved by giving attention to the following:

The cattle should be tested for tuberculosis every three months. The
walls of the cowhouse should be whitewashed three times a year. The
manure should be stored outside the barn. The floor of the cowhouse
should be sprinkled and swept each day. The cattle should be kept
clean--curried each day, and rubbed off with a damp cloth before
milking. The udders should be washed before each milking. The milker
can wear a