98 PRACTICAL DAIRY BACTERIOLOGY 



OTHER DISEASES DERIVED FROM THE COW 



There are no other diseases to which milch cows are subject 

 that we know positively are liable to infect the milk to any 

 considerable importance. Animals with foot or mouth disease 

 or splenic fever will give infected milk, and man might 

 take the disease, but these diseases are sudden and violent, 

 and are, moreover, at least in this country, quite rare. 

 Lockjaw and hydrophobia might sometimes be transmitted 

 through milk. But the violence of the diseases and the ex- 

 tremity of the sickness will hardly ever make it possible that 

 the milk of such animals should reach the public for consump- 

 tion. At all events we have at the present time no suspicion 

 that the public is in any source of danger from the milk from 

 such animals, and this subject may be passed with the simple 

 caution that no animal suffering from any violent disease should 

 be allowed to furnish milk for public consumption. 



DISEASES DERIVED FROM EXTERNAL SOURCES 



After the milk is drawn from the cow there are, at least, 

 three kinds of disease germs that may and sometimes do find 

 their way into it and become a source of danger to the con- 

 sumer. 



Typhoid Fever. The first and most important of these is the 

 typhoid fever germ. 1 (Figs. 38 and 39.) ' Typhoid fever epi- 

 demics attributable to milk are fairly common and, within a 

 comparatively few years, at least fifty have been thus traced. 

 The general character of such an epidemic is sharp and violent 

 but short. There will usually appear within a few days num- 

 erous cases of fever; but after a week or two further new 

 cases become less common and soon disappear. Such a brief 



1 Freeman. Med. Record of N. Y. Mar., 1896. 

 Fulton. Jour, of Hyg., i., p. 422, 1901. 

 Rembold. Cent. f. Bact. I., xxxiii., p. 204, 1903, 



