t U MILK-ANALYSIS. 



known, considerable alarm has been created in the west-end 

 of London, by a report that the milk purveyed by a certain 

 milk-company had occasioned an outbreak of typhoid fever 

 in Marylebone, and the parishes adjacent to Marylebone. 



It is, however, important to record that the result of in 

 vestigation has been to demonstrate the groundlessness of 

 these alarms. The returns of the Registrar- General, which 

 are now before the public, show that Marylebone has seldom 

 been so free from typhoid fever as during the period of the 

 supposed epidemic. 



The history of this supposed epidemic of typhoid fever, 

 or, as it would be more correctly designated, the history of 

 the milk-panic of 1873, is very instructive in many ways. 



Early in August, 1873, several children of an eminent west- 

 end physician were ill of typhoid fever, and their father 

 attributed the disease to the milk which they took. The 

 doctor s family was supplied with milk by the Dairy Reform 

 Company. On communicating his suspicions to neighboring 

 medical men, and to the medical officer of health for the dis 

 trict, a number of cases of alleged typhoid were found among 

 customers of the same dairy, a strangely large proportion of 

 these cases occurring in the families of medical men. It was 

 said that, naturally enough, the superior knowledge of medical 

 men was the explanation of the apparent preference of the 

 disease for their families, and that by and by the anomaly 

 would disappear when the multitudes of unrecognized cases 

 in non-medical families became sufficiently serious to force 

 recognition of their real nature. The physician and the 

 medical officer of health (in a most public-spirited manner, 

 as it was called) addressed a peremptory order to the 

 directors of the milk-company to stop selling milk ; the 

 fears of the physician even reached the local Government 

 Board, and an official investigation was ordered. 



Meanwhile the press took up the subject, and the medical 



