DISEASES COMMUNICABLE IN MILK 81 



in regular milk cars. In some cases the cans are transferred from one 

 train to another and if this is done carelessly the milk may be exposed 

 to pollution and perhaps infection. However, if milk is infected in these 

 ways it is only infrequently, but the possibility of such mishap should 

 be recognized and guarded against. 



Infection of Milk in the City Milk Plant. In the city milk plant, 

 milk is exposed further to accidental infection. It is customary 

 at many plants to taste the milk before accepting it in order to prevent 

 any which is off flavor being included in the daily output. Where the 

 milk is simply smelled, or tasted from a cup, which is filled with a ladle 

 there is no danger but where the cup is dipped into the cans there is 

 danger that the milk may be infected either from the fingers or saliva of 

 the tester. 



Afterward in the dumping of the milk from the cans into vats and 

 in the course of its journey through the various machines which it passes 

 until at last it is bottled and capped, it comes into contact with numerous 

 employees and anyone of them, if diseased or a carrier, may infect it. 

 That the possibility of milk being infected after its arrival in the city is 

 not fanciful is shown by the experience of Rockford, 111., in 1913, where 

 the milk of no less than three different contractors was received pure 

 from the farmers but in various ways was infected before delivery to 

 the public. As an instance of infection of the milk in transferring it 

 from the cans in which it arrives to others may be cited the Somerville 

 epidemic of 1892. The milk was brought in the shipping cans to the 

 milk plant where it was mixed in a large tank and drawn off through 

 faucets at the bottom into smaller cans for delivery to the trade. One 

 of two brothers who attended to the work in the dairy had walking ty- 

 phoid fever; consequently there resulted 30 cases of typhoid fever among 

 the customers. 



Infection of Milk by Cans and Bottles. One of the serious problems 

 of infection that both producers and retailers have to meet is that which 

 arises from the steady flow of cans and bottles to the public and back 

 again. Some of them get into shops and homes where there is contagion 

 or are handled by carriers at some stage of the journey. Consequently 

 they come back to the farm or milk plant in an infected condition and 

 communicate disease to those that handle them or to customers if they 

 are sent out again without thorough sterilization. Likewise bottles 

 and cans may be infected at the milk plant or farm by being filled with 

 milk from cows suffering with disease communicable to man so that if 

 these cans are picked up by dairymen and used without sterilization 

 the milk from their own healthy herds may become infected and distrib- 

 ute the disease. As an instance of this sort, the infection with septic 

 sore throat, of the routes of several. of the dairymen of Batavia, 111., 

 through the use of the bottles of Dairy X may be cited. Can and 



