140 BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE 



with milk or with dairy produce derived from it. 

 No doubt the largest part of the tuberculosis 

 which man obtains through his food is by means 

 of milk containing tuberculous matter." 



That the Commissioners were alive to the great 

 importance of this means of spreading disease is 

 further shown by the following significant para- 

 graph : " In regard to milk, we are aware of the 

 preference by English people for drinking cow's 

 milk raw, a practice attended by danger on 

 account of possible contamination by pathogenic 

 organisms." 



The Commissioners spared no pains in en- 

 deavouring to throw light upon the important 

 question they were appointed to report upon, and 

 five years elapsed before they published the results 

 of their inquiries. A decade ago the opinions ex- 

 pressed by them represented the current opinions 

 of the leading bacteriological authorities in scien- 

 tific circles at home and abroad, and these opinions 

 were gradually filtering down to the general public, 

 which is so conservative in clinging to traditions 

 and popular delusions, when, like a flash out of 

 the blue, the bacteriological Jove, Professor Robert 

 Koch, hurled his thunderbolt into the arena, and 

 at the British Congress on Consumption, held in 

 London in the summer of 1901, declared his belief 

 that bovine and human tuberculosis were distinct 



