RoBERTOX. — Milk as a Vehicle of Disease. iJ15 



carelessness, or through temptation or gain, supphers are 

 hable, in spite of all care on the part of consumers, to supply 

 unwholesome milk. We have seen that unwholesome milk 

 does not necessarily give signs of its unwholesomeness prior 

 to its consumption, and in such cases the consumer is at the 

 mercy of his milkman. It is necessary for cowsheds, dairies, 

 and other buildings connected with the trade to be open for 

 inspection to an authorized official competent to detect such 

 arrangements as may be prejudicial to the wholesomeness of 

 the milk. Such supervision is, however, required much less 

 on account of the liability of children to be affected by digestive 

 derangements from the use of unsound milk than because of 

 another great danger to which we have hitherto only inci- 

 dentally referred — the danger of milk being a means of carry- 

 ing infectious disease. Milk ser\dng such a purpose may give no 

 sign that it is in any way impure. It is only after an epidemic 

 shows itself that a chain of evidence is put together proving 

 that the milk-supply is at fault. Then it is found that with 

 proper precautious the epidemic might have been prevented. 

 For instance, scarlet fever breaks out in some neighbour- 

 hood; there is a simultaneous outbreak in several families, and 

 in the different families one, two, or more are affected at the 

 first appearance of the disease. The childi'en from the several 

 infected houses have never come in contact with each other 

 nor with any known to be suffering fi'om scarlet fever ; but it 

 is noticed that all the families are supplied with milk from 

 the same dairy, and that those fii'st affected have all partaken 

 of milk supplied during one or two special days. Others in the 

 same families using milk from another dairy, or absent from 

 home on these special days, have all escaped — at any rate, in 

 the nrst instance. Attention being directed to the dany from 

 which the milk is derived, it is found that there is an expla- 

 nation of the way in which the milk may have become 

 infected. Very frequently one of the milkers has children 

 suffering from scarlet fever, or has himself shown symptoms, 

 but so mild as not to compel him to give up his work. 

 Families supplied from the same dairy, but with milk kept 

 apart from that in which the affected individual has been con- 

 cerned, have all kept free of the disease. The evidence that 

 the milk was a cause of the epidemic is conclusive, but only 

 after it is too late to prevent the mischief. In such a case the 

 consumer has no opportunity whatever of preventing his family 

 from participating in the infection, and so we find in all 

 cases of epidemics arising from the milk-supply. A guarantee 

 of prevention lies only in the taking of such measures as will 

 abolish all possible source of infection from the time the 

 milk leaves the cow until it is delivered to the consumer. 

 The interest of the community in preventing epidemics of in- 



