ORIGIN OF DISEASE AND THE GERM THEORY. 137 



by the Agricultural Department of the Privy Council. The report is an 

 endeavour to minimise, as far as possible, the importance of the facts bearing 

 upon the same question which were made known by the researches of Mr. 

 Power, and were published in 1886 by the Medical Department of the Privy 

 Council. In December 1885 a sudden and extensive outbreak of scarlet fever 

 appeared to be associated with the distribution of milk by a retailer in Mary- 

 lebone, and also to be limited to the area of distribution of that portion of his 

 milk which he received from a particular farm at Hendon. It was elicited that 

 the milk supplied from certain sheds at the Hendon farm could be specially 

 connected with the outbreak, and also that outbreaks had occurred in various 

 places at St. John's Wood, in St. Pancras, at Hampstead, and at Hendon, in 

 connection with the movements from shed to shed of a particular cow, and with 

 the distribution of the milk which was furnished by the cows occupying the shed 

 in which she was placed. It was ultimately discovered that a certain cow had 

 been bought at Derby market, forthwith brought to London, and transferred 

 on the following day to Hendon dairy. She was suffering from an eruptive 

 disease affecting her udders, and she is said to have communicated this to other 

 cows with which she came into contact. As the disease spread in the dairy 

 the original definiteness of the distribution of scarlet fever by the medium of 

 the milk supplied from the sheds which the Derby cow from time to time 

 inhabited became less and less distinct ; and it soon came about that suspicion 

 attached itself to all the cows which had contracted the same malady. 

 These were accordingly put together into one shed, and it was decided that the 

 milk yielded by them should not be sold, but given to pigs. This decision 

 having become known in the vicinity, certain poor women resident there pre- 

 vailed upon people employed in the dairy to neglect the order and to give the 

 milk to them, with the result that their families were sti-icken down by scarlet 

 fever of peculiar seterity. The assistance of Dr. Klein was then solicited, and 

 this talented observer succeeded in obtaing a definite microbe (a streptococcus) 

 from the infecting milk, and by inoculating calves with cultivations of this 

 streptococcus he produced in them disease of a fatal character, which was 

 attended by organic changes resembling those of scarlet fever. 



Professor Brown seems to assume that he has supplied the true cause by 

 asserting that a man who lived within a mile of the dairy in question had a 

 daughter who was attacked by scarlet fever, and a son w^ho made it his amuse- 

 ment to visit the dairy as often as possible. It is not suggested that the son 

 had scarlet fever at any time, but the fact that his sister had the disease at the 

 time that he was going to and fro is mentioned as a possible explanation of a 

 milk epidemic of wide diffusion and considerable severity. Professor Crook- 

 shank's researches on this occasion seem to have been directed to prove that 

 the microbe found by Dr. Klein was the streptococcus pyogenes, one to which 

 the Professor attributes the power of producing a great variety of morbid 

 conditions. 



On the whole it certainly seems that the case made out by Mr. Power has not 

 in any important particular been shaken by the Report. Professor Brown, in- 

 deed, lays much stress upon negative evidence — upon the fact that there does 

 not appear to have been any general correspondence between sore teats in cows 

 and outbreaks of scarlet fever in mankind ; and he scarcely seems to give due 

 weight to the fact that there may be very different forms of sore teats — a 

 question which requires the most searching investigation. 



However, Professor Brown perhaps does well to caution us, inasmuch as, 

 though we cannot accept his rather optimistic views, still his very opposition 

 or hesitancy must assuredly help the cause of scientific truth, since it will 



