Few public health issues are more public than food safety, which can involve health
officials, farmers, manufacturers, and consumers. Milton J. Rosenau played a crucial role
in the long, contentious campaign to make milk supplies pure and safe in the United
States. As researcher, health official, and educator, Rosenau put medical science to work
in the service of preventive medicine and public health.
Rosenau was born in Philadelphia on January 1, 1869, and received his medical degree
from the University of Pennsylvania in 1889. In 1890, he joined the United States Marine
Hospital Service (MHS). He served as quarantine officer in San Francisco from 1895-1898
and in Cuba in 1898. During 1899-1909, he directed the MHS Hygienic Laboratory,
transforming a one-person operation into a bustling institution with divisions in
bacteriology, chemistry, pathology, pharmacology, zoology, and biology. Rosenau conducted
his most important medical research during his 10 years at the Hygienic Laboratory,
publishing many articles and books, including The Milk Question (1912) and Preventive
Medicine and Hygiene (1913), which quickly became the most influential textbook on the
subject.
From early in his career, campaigns to reduce milkborne diseases occupied Rosenau's
attention. As he stated in his textbook, "Next to water purification, pasteurization
is the most important single preventive measure in the field of sanitation." A Public
Health Service study in 1909 reported that 500 outbreaks of milkborne diseases had
occurred during 1880-1907. By 1900, increasing numbers of children drank pasteurized milk,
but raw milk remained the norm partly because the high-temperature process then in use
imparted a "cooked milk" taste. In 1906, Rosenau established that low
temperature, slow pasteurization (140 F [60 C] for 20 minutes) killed pathogens without
spoiling the taste, thus eliminating a key obstacle to public acceptance of pasteurized
milk. However, securing a safe milk supply nationwide took another generation. By 1936,
pasteurized, certified milk was the standard in most large cities, although over half of
all milk in the United States was still consumed raw.
In 1913, Rosenau became a Harvard University Medical School professor and a co-founder
of the Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology School for Health Officers. When
Harvard established a school of public health in 1922, Rosenau directed its epidemiology
program until 1935. In 1936, he moved to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to
help establish its public health school (1940), where he served as dean until his death in
1946.
Rosenau was a dedicated teacher and advocate for improved training in preventive
medicine, but he is better remembered for his textbook than his pioneering epidemiologic
work. This is as he expected: "We find monuments erected to heroes who have won wars,
but we find none commemorating anyone's preventing a war. The same is true with
epidemics."
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