of a crime. I use the word in its fullest significance a crime that can only be adequately punished by imprisonment."

As the adulteration of milk is a crime of widespread and frequent occurrence, we shall expect nothing else than an enormous infant mortality in all the cities. It is not necessary to go into details. It is sufficient to say that in New York city alone, in the year 1904, out of a total of 77,985 deaths, 21,952 were of children under two years of age. We shudder at the slaughter that has been going on for the last year in the Russo-Japanese war, but all the soldiers of Czar and Mikado that have gone down before the weapons of contending foemen are but a handful to the countless thousands of helpless innocents that are dying every year in the world as a result of poisoned milk.

Dr. Hurty has at last succeeded in getting an appropriation of $15,000 a year for the establishment and maintenance of a State Laboratory of Hygiene, where food samples may be analyzed and an active fight against food adulteration may thus be waged in future. His foresight, enthusiasm and perseverance, ultimately triumphing over all obstacles in the way of the establishment of this laboratory so full of economic and humanitarian promise, can not be too highly prized by the profession and people of our State.

But there is yet work for the rest of the profession to do.

In spite of local and State efforts to check this gigantic abuse, it is probable that larger quantities of adulterated foods are being put out by our manufacturers every year. Meanwhile the helpless people continue to ask for bread and receive a stone; continue to ask for a fish and receive a serpent. Of course, I do not presume to suggest a remedy, but I think that one thing that is needed is the enactment and rigid enforcement of a national pure food law, with uniform requirements for all the States. The friends of pure food have been faithfully laboring for twenty years to get a pure food law through Congress, but the labors of Sisyphus were trifling indeed when compared with the vexatious, discouraging obstacles and delays encountered by the promoters of such legislation.

Twice a satisfactory law has passed the Lower House, only to die of asphyxia in the Senate. A pure food bill has been introduced into every session of Congress since 1887. None of those bills has ever been voted down, nor will one ever be disposed of in this way.. It is not by open nor "brawling opposition" that the Senate does its deadly work.

But manufacturing interests representing an annual output and sale of $2,350,000,000 of products are financially too powerful to be easily set at naught. The forces opposing the pure food crusade are able at any time to raise a fund of $200,000 or $250,000 to lobby against the proposed legislation.

All sorts of specious reasons are given for the failure of the bill to make headway. Perchance the technical wording is not correct, or the phraseology is obscure; or there is not time for its consideration. Tariff reform or rate legislation must be discussed; or the appointment of postmasters or patronage in general, or the statehood bill, providing jobs for four new Senators, four Representatives and a full complement of State officers, all take precedence over pure food legislation. In fact, whenever the pure food bill comes up for consideration it meets some obstacle that as effectually bars its way as though it encountered "cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way."

Thus, by all sorts of ways that are dark and tricks that are vain the pure food legislation is hopelessly delayed. Dickens's Circumlocution Office was not more effective in delaying needed innovation than our venerable Senate.

Now that the conditions confronting the people are known, what can be done to correct the old abuses? In Anglo-Saxon countries, where the people rule, in order that existing laws may be enforced and much needed legislation brought about, it is necessary that every effort at reform should be sustained by an enlightened public sentiment. In creating this necessary public sentiment the medical profession has a work of the greatest altruistic moment. In this brief paper that I have read with so much misgiving I have presented no new facts. Every physician in the State knows the subject of food adulteration full as well as I

know it, and I do not arrogate to my paper any didactic value. But I do hope that it may have an ethical value in that it may arouse a few of those kind enough to listen to a realization of their power for good in all hygienic and civic affairs. We know full vell that the warning voice of the medical profession in civic affairs has ever been as the voice of one crying in the wilderness. But that is the price we pay for our lack of unity and organization. If men of the healing art could but bring themselves to work harmoniously together, there is no beneficent work that they could not bring to pass.

When the physician begins his lifework, an altruistic work of caring for the afflicted of mankind, he steadily effaces himself from public affairs, and lives a life apart from the busy throngs of men.

We are so accustomed to this isolation, to this self-effacement and life of abnegation that we do not realize the vast potential power of the profession, composed, as it is, of 125,000 of the brightest minds and most unselfish personalities in the land.

No man can surpass the physician in personal influence if he but choose to exercise his power.

No man, not even the priest, gets so near the human heart, nor feels with such sympathy its changing throbs of joy or sorrow. In fact, the true physician is himself a priest at heart, shriving his confessors of their physical sins, taking upon himself the burden of their sorrows and pains, and regenerating their broken spirits with the benediction of his sympathy and hope.

So it behooves physicians, as lovers of their fellowmen, to convert this potential latent power into an actual militant force; to cease doing only the work of sordid cures and look from the suffering and sorrow and death around them back to the cause of things; to make plain to those that depend upon their knowledge for protection that the beginnings of a vast amount, at least, of infant mortality is due to the poisoning of their only food supply.

Once the whole people know the terrible consequence of this traffic in posioned food, the whole nefarious business in all its discoverable ramifications will be swept from the land as vigorously as piracy was swept from the seas in times past.

It is the physicians' duty as the guardian of public health that this knowledge shall become universal.

When the people really know the universal extent of food adulteration and are indignant at the financial losses and physical suffering that it entails they will protest, and their demands will be so strong and ominous that even the sleepy Senate must hear and heed.

DISCUSSION.

Dr. F. A. Tucker, of Noblesville: Food preservatives and food adulteration is a subject that could be controlled by the prime principles of honesty as a base for a food law. The necessity of preserving food in some way has been recognized in the homes and factories since man has emerged from his primitive state. But the modern science of chemistry has placed the means of preserving foods and making tints and colors so fine an art that ordinary means can not detect them. I believe the rights of the consumer are paramount, and he should be consulted as to his tastes and desires, and he should be protected by the State, in so far as chemical analysis of foods, as to artificial coloring, preservatives and antiseptics are concerned. When they are harmful to the consumer in any manner, they should be eliminated. I believe the education of the public in regard to artificial colorings and harmful preservatives to be quite as effective as legislation, especially after a bill for a food law is amended and counteramended by so-called "wise" legislators, reaches the Governor for his signature its good intents and power of rendering a definite good are about all gone.

Every food stuff placed upon the market should bear a label stating what the food is, and if preservatives or colorings are used should specifically state their nature and amount so used. We should be very careful about drawing the line too close as between adulteration and food preservatives. The dangers to the consumer arising from reputably prepared foods to which preservatives have been added is nothing as compared to the dangers from foods having undergone putrefactive changes. Problems of such importance should be decided by medical men and expert

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chemists, and not in courts of law. Our fund of scientific knowledge on the subject should be increased over what it now is, and we, as medical men, should at least be in advance of legislation. I am proud of Indiana as a State, that she soon will have in full operation laboratories for scientific analysis of foods and drugs for the protection of the unsuspecting public, who should, in turn, be educated by the profession along these lines.

As an economic principle it is apparent that a nation of more than eighty millions of people can not be fed direct from the farm to the consumer's table, for we have the problem of transportation of foodstuffs to the great cities in an edible condition; therefore, it becomes a necessity for some chemical preservatives, but not adulterants. These conditions must be met and controlled for the best interest of the consumer.