ABSTRACT OF DISCUSSION.

Col. T. E. O. Marvin asked if it were not important to introduce physical training into the common schools as well as the higher grades and preparatory schools.

Mr. Fallows said he deemed it all-important.

MILK FROM DISEASED COWS.

BY THOMAS E. O. MARVIN, PORTSMOUTH, N. H., PRESIDENT NEW HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

Milk is the only single article of natural food that is capable of maintaining the life and promoting the growth of our bodies to healthy structural and functional completeness. The perfect adaptation of milk as sustenance to the physical life of man from infancy to old age, even, has rendered it an almost indispensable and universal article of diet.

Milk, like all other foods, should be free from every taint of corruption when submitted to the digestive and assimilative processes of the animal economy.

"A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit," neither can a diseased cow yield pure milk! You cannot squeeze healthful juice from a rotten orange, nor hatch live chickens from addled eggs. A fountain defiled at its source cannot send forth sweet

waters.

In the wild and natural state the cow produces only enough milk to feed her young for a month or two, and then goes dry until she brings forth another offspring. The tendency of cows to revert to the "dry" or non-milk-yielding condition when her calf has been weaned from the breast is prevented only by careful treatment, designed to develop and prolong the milk-yielding process. As milk is a profitable article of commerce, dairymen often give their cows such food as will promote the production of a large quantity rather than a good quality of that commodity. In the vicinity of large towns and cities, where distillers' swill or still-slop can be procured cheaply, it is used to a considerable

extent. This, if judiciously fed to the cows in small quantities, with a proper amount of hay and other food, would probably produce no deterioration in the quality of the milk; but when, as is too often the case, it is given in quantities out of all reasonable proportion to other kinds of food, it is certain to affect the health and constitution of the animals. The milk of cows fed principally upon still-slop is of a very inferior quality, and seldom yields more than one and a half per cent of butter, while the milk of healthy, well-fed cows contains from three to five per cent. Swill-milk will not coagulate in less than five hours, while good milk takes but one hour under similar conditions. The effect of such milk when taken into the stomachs of young children is very disastrous, causing a variety of distressing diseases, and, if continued, death is the invariable result.

Constitutional taints, indolent and malignant tumors, fevers, anthrax, horn-ail, scant food, thirst, exposure, the extremes of heat and cold, impure water, foul stables, fear of dogs, and ruffianly treatment in their stalls, are conditions of disease that render the milk of cows injurious, and very often positively poisonous to the human system.

The simple adulteration of pure milk yielded by healthy cows is a crime punishable in this State by heavy fines, as it ought to be, even when clean water is the only addition to the lacteal fluid. In Manchester a duly authorized and well-paid officer is appointed to detect and punish such petty frauds, while no effort whatever is made to bring the vile wretch who sells poisonous products of diseased animals to justice. The milk of cows whose secretions are rendered morbid by ill usage, improper food, infectious diseases, or putrid tumors, contains a poison as subtle as the miasma of the atmosphere of a plague-smitten city, and as difficult of detection by any chemical process.

Shall we, therefore, stand in helpless terror before the mouth of the deadly milk-can, like frightened travelers before the leveled revolvers of the Jesse James gang? or, realizing the impotency of chemical skill, shall we call common sense to our aid, and make some practical experiments for ourselves? If the inspector who applies his futile tests cannot protect us from the filth and nastiness of putrescent milk, we can employ a physi