AN OUTBREAK OF COW-POX. 281 



coccus found in certain cases of scarlet fever should produce on 

 inoculation in calves certain post-mortem appearances which are 

 found in many diseases, and should fail to produce fever, ulceration 

 of the tonsils, or scarlatinal rash, or any condition in the least 

 resembling, clinically, the disease in man, and yet that the result 

 should be regarded as scarlatina in the calf, is a conclusion quite 

 untenable. 



It is true that visceral lesions similar in character were produced 

 in calves whether inoculated with scrapings or with streptococci from 

 ulcers of the Hendon cows or with streptococci from certain cases of 

 scarlet fever. In both cases the streptococcus is pathogenic, and 

 inoculation of Streptococcus pyogenes or the inoculation of septic 

 virus, is liable to produce septicaemia. These facts constitute a mass 

 of evidence which justifies the conviction that the pathological data 

 which appeared to support the theory that the vesicular disease of 

 the t?ats of cows at Hendon was scarlatina in the cow, admit of an 

 entirely different interpretation, and there can be no longer any 

 doubt that the milk was not infected by the cows but with the virus 

 of scarlet fever from some human source which Mr. Power failed to 

 discover. 



All the other evidence reported to the Board of Agriculture pointed 

 to the same conclusion. The disease at Hendon w r as admittedly 

 introduced from Derbyshire; and from Professor Axe's report it 

 appears that only a part of the herd was sold to the farmer at 

 Hendon; other cows with the same eruption were transferred to 

 other dairy farms, and the disease communicated to healthy cows as 

 at Hendon, but in no instance did scarlet fever occur among the 

 consumers of the milk. At the farm of the brother of the dealer the 

 disease was communicated to three of the milkers, and the eruption 

 diagnosed by Dr. Bates as vaccinia. 



All this evidence must be regarded as conclusive. The con- 

 tamination of the milk at Hendon with scarlet fever must neces- 

 sarily have been a mere coincidence; and the conclusion that 

 the milk could not possibly have become infected from any 

 human source is untenable. Professor Axe even ax-ert.-iineil 

 that scarlet fever existed at Hendon during several months of 

 1880, and that the dwellings where cases occurred stood within six 

 hundred yards of the cowsheds which contained the incriminated 

 cows, and that out of fourteen men on the farm six lived in 

 a di>trirt where cases occurred. Professor Axe has also stated 

 that the father and brother of a girl with scarlet fever, visited the 

 dairy during her illness. Whether any of those engaged on the 



