Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1916 — BILLION GERMS IN DISH ICE CREAM [ARTICLE]

BILLION GERMS IN DISH ICE CREAM

KANSAS UNIVERSITY BACTERIOLOGIST EXPERIMENTS WITH MICROBES SIX MONTHS THE COLD DOES NOT KILL THEM They Live In tee and Continue to Multiply Rapidly, He says In Bulletin Topeka, Kan.—When bnb goes Into the corner drug store and purchases a dish of ice eream he purchases, in addition to the cream, 2,522,666,656 germs. That is the number of microbes found by Prof. F. H. Billings of the Kansas University Bacteriological laboratories in 10 cents .worth of fresh ice cream. Experiments in germs in ice cream for six months, and his conclusions are that there are never less than 2,500,000,000 of kicking squirming microbe* in the average dish of ice cream, not more than a day old. As the age of the cream Increases the more bugs one gets for the same money. The smallest number of microbes found in ice cream three days old was 3,941,666,666. These figures are for the cleanest, purest,' and best of ice cream that Prof. Billings could buy. The Kansas University has just sent out a bulletin on the germs to -h»-found in ice cream, prepared by Prof. Billings, to show the results of his experiments. TheTmlk-tln.. says: "Cold is unquestionably unfavorable to the activity of the germs, but the experiments showed that germs are the most resistant to extremes of temperature of all known organ- - isms-.—Often one thinks nothing of using ice from a river when one would not think of drinking the water from the same stream. The process of freezing removes some of the germs but others will live in the ice all summer and have their activity restored when they are put into a pitcher with the ice to make a eooling drink. “The experiments proved that germs increased in number in stored ice cream. A sample of fresh ice cream tested 16,000,000 germs to the cubic centimeter. After three days storage in a frozen state the number of germs in the same sample had gone up to 25,000,000 germs to each cubic centimeter. This equals 2,522,666,666 germs to the ordinary dish of fresh ice cream and 3,941,666,666 microbes to the same sized dish of cream three days old.

Tuberculosis germs have lived for 45 days in the laboratories when they were kept at a temperature ,of 345 degrees below freezing. The germs lost none of their vitality or virulence in -that time. Other germs have stood equally severe tests without injury. "Cold cannot be depended upon as a germ exterminator, but the winter is a bad time for the microbes. They have fewer opportunities to get in their deadly work. The cold weather renders the germs less active and they . are -not sp harmful. Sufficient use of. ice during the summer will stop the' ravages of the germs in warm weather. It is impossible to find milk that is free from germs. Some milk has many millions less germs than other milk, depending upon the sanitary conditions of the dairy and how the milk is handled. The filth germs kill many bottle fed infants and Infanr mortality is most prevalent in warm weather, when the germs are 'most active. Keeping the milk cold in warm weather does not reduce the number; in fact, it increases the number, but it makes the germs less active and hence less harmful.