No. XXXVI.B.] APPENDIX. 399 



The use of bad milk affects the rich as well as the poor; and the 

 twenty deaths and the 200 attacks of fever which occurred lately from 

 poisoned milk distributed in Marylebone occurred amongst those in a good 

 position in society. 



Milk is of such paramount importance to a metropolitan community, 

 that it should be an object of solicitude to the medical social inquirer that 

 it should be given to the public free from poisonous taint. 



All medical men treat typhoid and other fevers by milk, and what can 

 be more contrary to scientific principles than to supply a fever case with 

 putrescible milk ? Hence the most stringent rules should be adopted to 

 keep milk from the dangerous proximity to sewage ; so that the cupidity 

 of man should not cause it to be added to the milk, nor the thirst of the 

 cow for it to be drunk, and thus to be passed on to the milk. Every house- 

 hold knows that when the nurse is injudicious in diet the baby cries, and 

 cowf eeders are fully aware that when cows eat wormwood the milk is bitter, 

 and when they partake of garlic it is highly tasted. 



The effect of sewage food on the health of cattle and sheep is well 

 known to be deleterious. It has lately been stated by Mr. Scott that the 

 cows of Edinburgh, where they are fed upon sewage grass, have so high a 

 mortality, that the Cattle Insurance Company refused to renew the insur- 

 ance ; and I have the authority of the late auditor of the company for 

 stating that the enormous claims paid by the company for the Edinburgh 

 cows insured by them, and which died, ruined the company, and the refusal 

 to renew the insurance came too late. 



An intelligent man who worked upon a sewage farm informed me 

 that many of the sheep on the farm, as anybody might reasonably have 

 expected, became, to use his own word, " rotten." The rot in sheep is due 

 to an entozoon called a fluke, which in the human being becomes an 

 hydatid, and whilst sheep had the rot and were passing the ova of hydatids, 

 the water was flowing to watercresses, from whence this terrible malady 

 (which is estimated to kill 400 persons annually) might conveniently be 

 conveyed by its host to the interior of man. 



In 1869 a great epidemic broke out on the sewage-grounds of Croydon 

 amongst the cattle, about which there were strange reports. To clear up 

 the mystery, the following questions were sent to the Croydon Board, who 

 declined to answer them : 



1. How many cattle existed on the sewage-ground before the epidemic 

 appeared ? 



2. Had cattle been introduced from any other locality? if so, how 

 many, and from whence ? 



3. On what day did murrain appear on the irrigation-ground ? 



4. How many cattle have been attacked in all since that day ? 



5. Have any cattle since that day been killed ? and, if so, how many ? 



6. If sold, to whom were the carcases consigned ? 



7. Were the carcases used for human food ? and, if so, who inspected 

 them, to see that they were fit to be eaten ? 



8. Have any cattle been sold other than for human food ? if so, were 

 the purchasers informed that murrain existed in the sewage-grounds, that 

 the contagion might not be propagated ? 



9. What are the number of cattle now on the sewage-grounds ? 

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