266 PATHOGENIC BACTERIA IN MILK 



1882, the milk supply was derived from a farm south of London, 

 and was conveyed straight through to North London. But at 

 Charing Cross Station 2 or 3 gallons of the milk were removed 

 from the churns for local consumption. Thirteen persons amongst 

 the railway men or their families were attacked. At Eagley in 

 1876, of fifty-nine families supplied with implicated milk, 96 per 

 cent, were attacked with typhoid ; of two hundred and sixty-one 

 families not so supplied, 5 per cent, were attacked. Particularly 

 instructive are cases which occur at a distance from the infected 

 locality but in which those attacked have consumed the implicated 

 milk. 



In the outbreak of diphtheria of 1886 in York Town and 

 Camberley, of the fifty-seven houses invaded, forty-eight (or 84 per 

 cent.) took the implicated milk. Of the one hundred and forty 

 individuals attacked, 88 per cent, were consumers of the milk, and 

 there was evidence to show that the amount of milk consumed 

 determined the severity of the disease. Eighty-four per cent, of 

 the houses of the better class consuming this milk were invaded, 

 and only 22 per cent, of the poorer class ; and further, while 33 

 per cent, of the consumers of the better class contracted diphtheria, 

 only 6 per cent, of the poorer class acquired it, " Though uni- 

 formly infective on the farm," wrote Mr Power, " the milk had a 

 very different effect in causing diphtheria, according as it was 

 distributed to one and another class of consumers. This difference 

 of effect had to do with difference of amount (and related difference 

 of use and difference of conservation) of milk distributed in the two 

 classes. The diphtheria among the better class was, as regards 

 amount and fatality, so conspicuous that its relation to the milk 

 service was readily seen ; but among poor class consumers it was 

 so inconspicuous in amount and fatality that the fact of its relation 

 to the milk service might readily have been overlooked. It is 

 altogether doubtful, therefore, whether, in the absence of the test 

 of the milk which was furnished by the behaviour of the epidemic 

 among customers of the better class, the ability of this milk service 

 to cause diphtheria would have been detected." ^ In this outbreak 

 households of the better class, which suffered so exceptionally, had 

 averaged 5-2 pints of the implicated milk per day ; whereas, among 

 the cottagers and tradespeople, it had averaged only o-8 pints daily. 



In that same year Mr Power investigated an outbreak of scarlet 

 fever at Wimbledon, to which reference has been already made. 

 As we have seen, the disease attacked in particular the classes 

 1 Local Government Board Medical Officer's Supplement^ 1886, pp. 311-326. 



