DR. J. W. KERR'S PAPER 179 



of typhoid fever and traced the infection to milk. 1 

 Observations of like character were repeatedly made 

 later in Great Britain, Hart having collected reports 

 of no less than forty-three such outbreaks there prior 

 to i88i. 2 In making these observations British health 

 authorities and physicians were the pioneers, as they 

 have been in so many other matters affecting the 

 public health. 



Like observations were first recorded in the United 

 States in i882, 3 but the number was soon multiplied 

 until there could be no doubt that a new problem 

 in milk control had arisen the economic aspects of 

 milk production are becoming overshadowed by its 

 public health aspects. 



The next principle of milk control incorporated in 

 law appears, therefore, to have been that aimed at 

 preventing the transportation and sale of milk con- 

 taminated by " the emanations, exhalations or dis- 

 charges of any person sick with communicable disease." 

 The development of this legislation and the deter- 

 mination of the facts on which it was based marked a 

 second epoch in milk control which extended for a 

 decade or more from 1880, and dealt with dangerous 

 milk. 



The practical application of bacteriology in the 

 study of milk, and the discovery of the tubercle 

 bacillus as the cause of tuberculosis, may be said 

 to have marked the beginning of the third or present 

 epoch in milk control in the United States a period 

 within which intermittent effort has been made in 

 many sections against unsafe and insanitary milk 

 supplies. 



The milk statutes existing prior to 1890 were not 

 intended to control bacterial contamination, that is 



1 Dr. R. M. Taylor, Edinburgh Medical Journal, May, 1858. 

 - Hart (E.), British Medical Journal, 1897, i* P- 

 8 Hygienic Laboratory Bulletin, No. 56, p. 26. 



