THE MILK CONTRACTOR 285 



ization. This disease was first recognized in this country in 1911 when it 

 was the cause of a widespread epidemic in Boston. One of the most care- 

 fully supervised dairies in New England was the victim of its onslaught. 

 This epidemic was followed by other extensive outbreaks of the same 

 disease in several of the principal cities of the United States. While 

 in some instances the sanitary standards of the dairies that were attacked 

 were not commendable, in others they were excellent and it was evident 

 that the disease might get into a dairy without those responsible for the 

 conduct of the business being aware of its presence, consequently they 

 could not justly be held responsible for distributing it. When septic 

 sore throat first began to be recognized it was very strongly suspected 

 that the streptococci that caused it were derived from the udders of cows 

 suffering with mammitis. As it was known that in most large herds 

 there were usually one or more cows that had the disease, the question 

 arose as to what extent these animals menaced the public health. At 

 that time the evidence had not been collected that it is those cows whose 

 udders have been infected with streptococci by persons having septic 

 sore throat, or by carriers of the Smith streptococcus and there was 

 serious concern over the possibility that all gargety cows might be more 

 dangerous than had hitherto been believed. Boards of health were active 

 and attempted to exclude from the market milk that had a high cellular 

 content but this position was found untenable, because it was discovered 

 that the milk of perfectly healthy cows as well as that of those suffering 

 from mammitis, at times had a high cellular count. Then the association 

 of long-chained streptococci with a high cell count in the milk was ad- 

 vanced as evidence that the milk came from a cow having mammitis and 

 so was potentially dangerous, which sufficed to debar the milk from the 

 market. However, this theory was not at once universally accepted so 

 that there was neither a certain way o telling whether a given sample 

 of market milk was in part derived from cows that had mammitis, nor 

 for telling whether any streptococci that were observed in the milk were 

 dangerous to man. To such a situation pasteurization offered a safe 

 and welcome solution. 



3. Impossible to Protect Milk from Human Infection. The situation 

 with regard to human disease was quite as serious as with animal diseases. 

 For instance, Lumsden in 1908 stated that on the assumption that there 

 were seven persons on each of the 1,000 dairy farms supplying Washing- 

 ton, D. C., there would be on these farms, since at that time about one 

 person in every 300 in the United States every year had typhoid fever, 

 25 new cases of this one disease yearly. Bolduan states that the milk 

 supply of New York City in 1912 came from 40,000 farms and that in one 

 way or another 200,000 people handled the milk. The incidence" of 

 typhoid fever around New York varied from 150 to 200 cases per 100,000 

 annually so that these people who handled^the milk would furnish 300 



