05/14/2025
“One frequently hears the remark, Look at me, I am hail and a hearty at three score in 10 and have always been fond of milk and taken it just as it comes, dirt, bacteria and all. Such persons forget three very important things. The first is that the fruits of victory are not to be judged by the survivors alone.
We must have a role of the killed and wounded too. The sanitarian so often hears the argument, Look at me, it has not hurt me, that it is beginning to tax his patience. If the health officer wants to close an infected well, the grandfather points with patriarchal pride to his hail old years and hearty health as proof that the water can do no harm.
I once heard a mother of four children, all that remained of ten, say, Well, you cannot expect to raise them all. But we do expect to raise them all nowadays, especially if they can be nurtured upon fresh, clean and safe milk. The second important thing, which old folks seem to forget, is that conditions have greatly changed since they were young.
Then the milk was wagon hauled to town and used the same day while fresh. Now it comes through many hands and is often about 48 hours old when it reaches the household. Finally, in the old days, many a milk-borne outbreak occurred.
Many an infant met an untimely death through impure milk, but the dangers were not known and therefore not realized. The affliction was attributed to sewer gas, to miasms from the soil, or to some mysterious agency, if not the will of divine providence. The milk has not changed so much since the good old times, but our knowledge has.”
~ The Milk Question, by MJ Rosenau, 1912
Podcast Episode · This Podcast Will Kill You · 04/29/2025 · 1h 10m
