IO8 PRACTICAL DAIRY BACTERIOLOGY 



them it appears that they may in part be attributed to milk 

 bacteria. 1 They seem to be associated with large numbers of 

 bacteria in milk. They are especially common among children 

 in warm weather, and the mortality from such diseases rises 

 and falls with the number of bacteria in milk. This in itself 

 does not prove much, however, for the number of bacteria in 

 milk simply rises and falls with the temperature, and it may 

 be that temperature itself is the primary factor. But it 

 becomes more significant when we learn that these diarrheal 

 troubles during the severe warm weather are far less abundant 

 among children that are breast-fed, thus obtaining their milk 

 from a source where the number of bacteria will be compara- 

 tively small, than among those fed on cow's milk. Again ex- 

 perience has shown that pasteurizing the milk, which reduces 

 the number without destroying them all, causes a notable re- 

 duction in the amount of intestinal disturbances and in the 

 mortality of children from such sources. Lastly, among children 

 ed upon certain improved forms of milk, which we shall notice 

 later, the death rate from such causes is notably less than 

 among children fed upon ordinary milk. In our large cities 

 the children's death rate is startling in hot weather, and is 

 always directly associated with a poor quality and a high bac- 

 terial content of the milk. 



TOXIC POISONING FROM MILK PRODUCTS 



Closely related to the last topic are the occasional instances of 

 toxic poisoning from milk, cream or cheese. These are charac- 

 terized by violent cases of illness that follow the consumption of 

 a single lot of poisonous food and come to a crisis and pass off 

 rapidly. A few instances of such severe illness due to drink- 

 ing a lot of milk 2 have been recorded and several of similar 



1 Rickards. Jour, of Hyg., 1903. 

 2 Zammet. Brit. Med. Jour., p. 2054, 1900. 

 Vaughan. Arch. f. Hyg., xxvii., p. 308, 1896. 



