Milk in Bottles (1878) plus later Pasteurization halved the Infant Mortality rate within a few years ꩜

[SorellaLaBefana]

For some reason Britannica has taken to defacing their lede photos/artworks with puerile orange graffiti. Usually, TinEye can find the original undefaced image. Not this time.

...in 1878 Alexander Campbell of the New York Dairy Company Ltd. pulled off something revolutionary: He delivered milk that was contained. There was no ladling, pouring, or siphoning into whatever tub, bucket, or pail was handy. This milk arrived in a clean, clear... glass pint bottle, sealed with a lid...

No standards governed refrigeration, storage, or processing, and additives were sometimes mixed in to “enhance” milk (read: disguise spoilage). These “enhancements” included everything from plaster of paris to charcoal to eggs. The milk traveled in a large container, and customers filled their own vessels along the route. Cleanliness, then, depended on the consumer, the container, the ladle, the weather...

A sealed bottle meant fewer hands touching the milk and fewer opportunities for contamination. But it didn’t solve everything. Commercial pasteurization wasn’t far off...its application to milk proved transformative. Rates of diseases routinely transmitted through milk (typhoid, strep, tuberculosis) dropped, and infant mortality fell by half...

https://www.britannica.com/today-in-history/January-11-Milk-in-Glass-Bottles

I refrain from comment.

[jmbar2]

1. Here is a fabulous documentary that builds on your post.

Sara Josephine Baker, a lesbian physician, pioneered public health in NYC at the turn of the century, saving an estimated 90,000 babies. A big part of that was promoting pasteurized milk.

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[SorellaLaBefana]

2. Just more evidence of the dangers of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ?

Um, gentle reader (just in case) the title is Sarcasm. Bitter sarcasm.

Yes, one realizes that "Bitter sarcasm" can be considered either a tautology or a pleonasm. However, "sarcasm" alone simply just can't cut it in this time and place in our herstory.

Than you so much for that link. I did *not* know of Dr Baker's work