74 Effect of Internal Influences. 



ble through cheese and butter (Frohner, Ebstein, Thiele, Schnei- 

 der, Frick, Frohlich). 



The general rules which have been indicated above obtain also 

 in changes of the milk in malignant oedema, blackleg, or parturient 

 blackleg of cattle. Transmission of these diseases through the 

 consumption of milk from affected cattle, or through the diseased 

 products of contaminated milk, is not to be feared; besides milk 

 production ceases very rapidly in the affected animals. 



The same rules should apply in judging milk from animals 

 affected with hemorrhagic septicemia, a disease which is pro- 

 duced by a bi-polar bacterium. This disease is transmissible to 

 calves, through sucking or feeding milk from affected animals. 



Anthrax of cattle should also be mentioned. This runs in an 

 acute or sub-acute form, and as a rule is associated with a sudden 

 cessation of the milk secretion, which occurs even as early as at 

 the beginning of the fever. The anthrax bacilli only multiply 

 towards the end of the disease sufficiently to cause a direct passage 

 from the blood into the milk. If the secretion has continued to 

 some extent this direct passage is possible even if no hemorrhages, 

 such as are typical during the course of anthrax, have developed 

 in the parenchyma of the udder. The demonstration of anthrax 

 bacilli in milk has been accomplished micro scopically, and by 

 inoculation and cultural experiments, but not in all the cases 

 which have been examined (Bollinger, Chambrellent and Mous- 

 sou, Feser, Monatzkow). 



In severe cases the milk becomes yellowish, bloody and slimy. 

 At the appearance of the fever the fat and sugar contents are in- 

 creased, while the proteid contents are diminished. 



The danger of infection through the ingestion of raw milk con- 

 taining bacilli is slight, since the anthrax bacilli are digested by 

 the gastric juice. More dangerous than the bacilli which may pass 

 into the milk from the blood are the anthrax spores which may 

 reach the milk through contamination with manure of affected 

 animals, or through straw and stable dust, since the resistant 

 spores are not destroyed by the gastric digestion. The virus may 

 also be present at times in normally healthy animals after they 

 ingest food containing anthrax spores.. The milk may become 

 infective through contamination with feces from such bacilli car- 

 riers. In spite of the fact that there are remarkably frequent 

 opportunities to obtain milk with bacilli and spores from localities 

 in which anthrax persists epizootically as a disease of the soil, yet 

 only one anthrax infection of man is known to have occurred 

 through the ingestion of milk. This resulted in a patient with 

 typhoid fever, who after drinking iy 2 liters of milk became affected 

 with intestinal anthrax. The milk was derived from a cow with 

 a malignant pustule on the udder, which had died in the meantime 

 from anthrax. 



