The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

January, 192'i The Health Bulletin
Health, the purchase and consumption
of a bottle of milk is just about as
safe as the purchasing and eating of
any packaged food sold from the shelves
of any clean grocery. So the prejudice
against milk on account of the fear
concerning its safety can very readily
be dispensed with, especially if ordinary
care is exercised in the handling of
milk after it reaches the kitchen of
the consumer.
Keeping Milk
Cool
In the old days before the production
of artificial ice, all the better class
farm homes were provided with milk
houses in which standing water, which
frequently changed, assured a reasonably
low temperature in which to preserve
the milk from milking time to
table use. The reason so few facilities
of that kind are observed today about
over the State is because the class of
farmers who made such ample provision
for carefully taking cax'e of the milk
find it cheaper and easier in these days
of good roads, automobiles, and cheap
ice to maintain refrigerators exactly
like their city neighbors. So it is safe
to say that milk is easy to keep in any
kind of farm home. For the tenant
farmer, white or colored, who is not
able to have a refrigerator or ice box,
it is easy enough to milk twice a day
and in the hottest weather to utilize
the pans of water for keeping the milk
cool.
The reason for so much to say on
this phase of the matter is because one
of the essentials to a safe milk supply
is a cool temperature, because milk
affords an ideal culture ground for
propagation of numerous disease germs
in hot weather. But, as aforementioned,
this requirement is easy to meet. As
proof of this fact, milk is shipped today
from around Charlotte to points
in Florida. There is one concern at
least in Raleigh that daily has a large
amount of milk shipped to it from as
far away as West Virginia. The distribution
of such milk is made ab.solutely
safe through the modern provision
of pasteurization, which has now
reached a stage of perfection never before
realized in the past.
Economic
Aspect
Primarily, the economic aspect of the
milk question is not the official concern
of the State Board of Health, for other
departments of the State Government
are much better prepared to deal with
that aspect of the question. However,
from the standpoint of health and happiness,
the State Board of Health is
naturally interested to a very vital
extent. Old-timers had a saying in the
country districts that they had never
seen a mortgage foreclosed on a farm,
be he owner or tenant, who raised his
own meat supply and his own corn, had
his own chickens, and kept his own
cow. One of the first essentials to good
health for any family is happy surroundings,
contentment in work, and
a plentiful food supply of proper food,
and consequently freedom from worries
and anxieties that undermine the health
of any individual any time, any where.
"MULTIPLE HYGIENES'
Doctor George H. Bigelow, State
Commissioner of Health of Massachusetts,
writing recently in the Bulletin
of Health of that State said that "This
seems to be the era of multiple
hygienes. With the development of
health education and the emphasis on
the health examination we hear of
hygiene of the mind, the skin, the hair,
the teeth, the bowels, the feet, posture
and so on. Also we are seldom allowed
to forget social hygiene or industrial
hygiene. It is all very hygienic and confusing
and we hardly know where to
begin, or, what may be worse, where
to stop. Ther^ is much in all of this
that is sound and much that is unmitigated
bunk." To which sentiments
we wish to echo a loud Amen.
Health is a peculiar adjustment requiring
the harmonious coordination of
numerous factors having different
values ; and each factor having a different
significance when applied to individual
entities, so that it will be probably
forever impossible to adopt particular
prescriptions for universal use.
An educational health service could be
founded on such a premise if a drug
or a regime good for one patient would