i8o INFECTIOUS AND PARASITIC DISEASES. 



fowl, eggs, milk, butter, fruits and game. Hence it is 

 probably true, although we haven't^the support of figures 

 for the assertion, that more of the above mentioned 

 foods are eaten out of season than in. 



Our reason for dwelling upon this phase of modern 

 economic life is to draw attention to the probability 

 of communicable diseases being carried with foods 

 from points widely separated, and the difficulty of 

 tracing those so carried to their source. Refrigeration 

 does not necessarily kill infectious agents and animal 

 parasites, indeed, we have already called attention to 

 the dangers of ice in relation to typhoid fever and cholera; 

 so that through this system some contaminated article 

 such as cream, may first be shipped five hundred miles 

 to a creamery, churned into butter there, held in 

 storage a few months, and finally be shipped another 

 thousand miles, or across the ocean to Europe. The 

 possible contamination of fruits, berries, and vegetables 

 by those that pluck them has been considered a few 

 lines above ; in the refrigerator car, therefore, we see a 

 way by which iinfectious or parasitic agents contamina- 

 ting such products may be transported. 



By the mouth through foods and water, are taken in 

 the agents of typhoid fever, Asiatic cholera, small-pox, 

 measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, plague, 

 anthrax, syphilis, amoebic and bacillary dysentery, 

 actinomycosis, milk sickness, and aphthous fever (foot 

 and mouth disease). 



