No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 417 



ducts of the dairy in preparing them for market. This restriction 

 may often work hardship, but it is the only right and proper course 

 to pursue. But probably the greatest harm results from many dis- 

 eases occurring in so mild a form that their real character is not at 

 all discovered, or not until the milk has been contaminated. This 

 may be true of typhoid fever, small-pox, consumption (tuberculosis), 

 measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever and dysentery. When any of these 

 diseases are suspected, the affected person should have nothing to 

 do with milking, working iu the stables, or in handling the dairy 

 products. 



A consumptive, by spitting iu the stable, might be the means of 

 contaminating the milk, the cows lying down in the sputum, and so 

 with the other diseases. A person who has been sick from any 'con- 

 tagious disease is liable to convey it, so long as he has any dis- 

 charge from the nose, mouth or bowels, due to the disease. Mere 

 discharges sometimes continue a considerable time after the patients 

 are apparently well. 



Typhoid fever is the disease which has most frequently, of the 

 above named diseases, been traced to contaminated milk. This mav 

 be due to the fact that the germ has a greater vitality and lives 

 longer than the others, because it is more generally prevalent, and is 

 more commonly unrecognized than the other named diseases. From 

 dirty hands it passes to the milk in the act of milking, or in handling 

 the milk or in washing the utensils. In a recent epidemic as Carbon- 

 dale, Pa., a man with "walking typhoid fever" washed his hands in 

 the tank in which the milk was cooled, and from this source, the 

 germs appear to have gotten into the milk. 



Another way in which milk is undoubtedly contaminated at times, 

 is by cows standing in sewage-polluted streams. These polluted 

 streams may be found near almost every town and village in the 

 State, and as almost every community has at least a few cases of 

 this disease every summer, and as excreta are generally disposed of 

 in the readiest manner, this means of contamination becomes a highly 

 probable one. 



III. DISEASED ANIMAL PRODUCTS. 



Fortunately for us, comparatively few diseases, which affect do- 

 mestic animals, are transmitted to mankind. The cow and the sheep 

 have tuberculosis is true, but the writer fully believes that it is ex- 

 tremely rare, that this disease is ever passed to a human, either 

 through the milk or flesh of such animals. The possibility of such 

 transmittal is not denied. 



Cattle suffer from anthrax. The hides from animals dead of 

 this disease are saved in some countries, and occasionally cause the 

 disease to appear among tanners in this country, showing that the 

 germ possesses great vitality. Probably no one in the United States 

 would think of removing the hide of an animal dead of anthrax. 

 Such animal carcasses should either be completely burned or buried 

 six feet below the surface of the ground. 



In some parts of the South and West cows suffer from what is 

 called "milk sickness." The disease is unknown in Pennsylvania. 

 Animals having this disease transmit it to mankind in milk, butter, 

 cheese and flesh. 



27—6—1905 



