84 Dairy Bacteriology. 



transmission of cholera, although the danger from this 

 source is somewhat minimized on account of the inability 

 of this germ to thrive luxuriantly in acid fluids. Kitasato 1 

 found that the cholera germ could live in raw milk from 

 one to four days, depending upon the amount of acid that 

 is present in the m ilk . In boiled , or sterilized milk , cholera 

 can grow more freely as the acid-producing organisms 

 are destroyed by the heat used. In butter it has been 

 found after four or five days, but the acid reaction re- 

 strains its growth and soon kills it. 



Cholera epidemics in India have more than once been 

 traced directly to contaminated milk. Simpson 2 records 

 a case of infection where ten sailors out of twenty- four 

 partook of some milk that had been purchased from a 

 milkman, in whose district cholera had recently broken 

 out. Of these ten, four died, five were severely sick, 

 and one that used the milk sparingly was slightly ill. 

 Investigation proved that the milk had been adulterated 

 with water that had been taken taken from an open pool 

 in the infected district. 



2. Diphtheria. This is another contagious disease, the 

 specific organism of which finds in milk favorable condi- 

 tions of growth, and there is abundant evidence to indicate 

 that milk functions as a transmitter of contagion if it 

 once becomes contaminated with the same. Whether the 

 animal can actually serve directly to spread the disease 

 is yet a question. Klein 3 affirms as a result of animal 

 inoculations that diphtheria will develop in the cow, at- 

 tacking among other organs the udder, and so infecting 

 the milk, but both Abbott 4 and Vladimirow 5 failed to 

 confirm these observations. 



1 Kitasato, Arb. a. d. Kais. Gesund. Amte, 1: 470. 

 8 Simpson, London Practitioner, 39: 144 (1887). 



3 Klein, 19th Kept. Soc. Gov. Bd. (Great Britain), 1889, 167. 



4 Abbott, Vet. Mag., 1: 17. 



5 Vladimirow, Arch. sci. biol. Inst. Med. St. Petersburg, p. 84, 1892. 



