PASTEURISED MILK.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIX, Issue 11537, 25 March 1898, Page 3

PASTEURISED MILK.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —The announcement in your paper this morning that the Hospital Board of Management did not care to take the responsibility of enforcing pasteurised milk upon the institution, because its medical advisers did not look with favour upon the article, will come as a surprise to you and many' of your readers. Keeping abreast with the times, you have for months past been advocating the use of this milk, and, so far as I have been able to ascertain, every dairying journal published in any part of the civilised world, every scientific specialist who has gone fully into the question, and every doctor of any note who has spoken upon it, have, _ as with one voice, said that pasteurised or sterilised milk is a very important thing. I have spoken to almost every doctor in Christchurch myself about the matter, and all with one exception have said it was tho proper thing. Whoa this milk was being introduced into Sydney a little more than a year ago, the leading medical men of that city said to the company, “ Once make the people understand what pasteurised milk is and every mother will insist upon it and no other.” 'The Sydney Board of Health have issued a public proclamation, in which they say, “ Pasteurisation is so valuable a precaution in many important relations to health, that all milk supplied to tho .public should be pasteurised.” In New York it is the law that all milk delivered to the public must be pasteurised, and since this law came into force the death-rate has gone down from 28 per 1000 to 20 per 1000. In Brooklyn, the Board of Health reports that the deathrate amongst infants from diarrhoeal diseases alone has been reduced from 148 per 100,000 to 101 per 100,000, and they say these figures speak eloquently’ in

favour of pasteurised milk. In face of these facts, I do not think it is too much to expect from the medical staff of the hospital that they should give to the public the reasons why they do not look with favour upon pasteurised milk.— I am, &c., J. KNOTT.