HENDON OUTBREAK 283 



The main facts respecting the investigation are printed in the 

 Abstracts at the end of the present section. Briefly, they show- 

 that the incidence of the scarlet fever appeared to follow with 

 remarkable accuracy the distribution of milk from three particular 

 cows (and others infected by them) which had newly calved, and 

 which were suffering from some specific disease. As it presented 

 itself at Hendon, this disease, according to Dr Klein, consisted in 

 the presence of sores and scurfiness in different parts of the skin, 

 with loss of hair in patches, an eruption leading to the formation of 

 a sore covered with dark brown scab or crust on the udder and teats, 

 and a visceral disease of the lungs, liver, kidney, and spleen, which, 

 although milder in character, much resembled, in his opinion, the 

 visceral lesions occurring in cases of human scarlet fever. By 

 experiment, Dr Klein found that the matter of the eruption on the 

 udder of these Hendon cows was inoculable into calves, and when 

 inoculated under their skin set up a similar eruption. At the 

 time of these experiments, Dr Klein held that the milk of the cow 

 did not itself contain the germ of this " Hendon disease," but that 

 the germ obtained entrance to the milk from the outer surface of 

 the udder at the time of milking, and that in milk it found a 

 favourable nidus for its growth and multiplication. 



" In short," Mr Power reported, " what had been seen to be a 

 succession of probabilities, if the scarlatina in London districts 

 were indeed the outcome of the milk distributed from the 

 Hendon farm, was now established as a succession of facts. We 

 had thus reached the point of excluding external scarlatina, of 

 associating the importation of particular cows into the Hendon 

 farm with presence of scarlatina in London districts, and of con- 

 necting, by a series of parallel events, the milk furnished by 

 those cows and by related cow's, with the peculiarities of scarlatina 

 prevalence among consumers of the Hendon farmer's milk. 

 Under these circumstances it was not judged necessary to go 

 beyond the Hendon farm and to inquire at the two other farms 

 which also sent milk into the London districts of South Mar>'lebone, 

 Hampstead, and St Pancras, in search of the cause of scarlatina 

 in those districts. Henceforward, until anything to the contrary 

 should appear, an influence, competent to produce scarlatina among 

 the consumers of the milk, was held to have operated from those 

 cows which were received into the Hendon farm on 15th November 

 and the further concern of the inquiry was with the nature of such 

 influence." 



Sir George Buchanan, on behalf of the Local Government 



