PASTEURISED MILK.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIX, Issue 11537, 25 March 1898, Page 4

PASTEURISED MILK.

The Hospital Board at its-meetingi on -Wednesday said either- too^mucE

or too little on the subject of milk pasteurisation. Of course it took quite the proper course in refusing to introduce into the institution under its control an article of diet that is not recommended by the medical staff, but it should, we think, have ascertained why the members of that body have found it necessary to disagree with the opinion expressed by many of their most distinguished professional brethren. If the matter was worth mentioning at all, it was worth a few words of explanation. As far as we have observed, the medical profession is almost unanimous in its approval of the pasteurising process, and the report of the Sydney Board of Health may be taken as fairly representative. “ Pasteurisation,” it says, “is so valuable a precaution in many important relations to health that all milk supplied to the public should be pasteurised and then rapidly cooled before being distributed. Many disease germs, and all those that cause milt to change, are thus destroyed, so that the milk remains sweet for a great many hours longer than it otherwise would. Thus those commencing decompositions which are so harmful to young children are largely prevented.” Our dairies and our methods of milk distribution are not so clean or so expeditious that a little precautionary measure of this kind would not he acceptable, and if the medical officers of the hospital have anything against a process so generally recommended by all means let us have their opinion. We certainly agree with the correspondent whose letter appears in another column that the reasons for the statement made at the Hospital Board meeting should at once be made public.