36o 



PATHOGENIC BACTERIA IN MILK 



parents who consumed unboiled milk or cream were attacked. 

 One man took cream in the form of ice cream, and had a severe 

 attack.^ 



Mr Gifford Nash made inquiries of the dairy farmer and visited 

 the farm. The cows and milkmen were healthy, the water supply 

 good, the cowsheds clean, and the milk-cans were said to be scalded 

 with boiling water. The arrangements appeared to Mr Nash to 

 be excellent. Specimens of milk were examined bacteriologically 

 a week or so later, and no disease germs were found at that time. 

 Such probably existed at the time of the outbreak. 



On inquiry as to what was done with milk from cows with 

 sore udders, Mr Nash was informed that it was passed through the 

 separator, as this was stated by the manufacturers " to filter 

 milk, removing tubercle and other disease germs." Mr Nash 

 adds : — 



" Outbreaks like this show the weak points in our sanitary system. 

 It is nobody's duty to investigate the cause of an outbreak of 

 septic sore throat, as the disease is not notifiable and therefore 

 the Medical Officer of Health does not hear of it. I think that 

 every case of septic sore throat should be notifiable. Then out- 

 breaks due to defective drains, water, or milk supply, would 

 become known to the Medical Officer of Health and could be 

 investigated by him. The difficulties of tracing an outbreak 

 like to this to its origin in the dairy can only be successfully 

 carried out by a sanitary expert with the aid of a skilled bacterio- 

 logist." ^ 



The age and sex incidence of the cases was as follows 



Mr Nash believes that the incidence of the disease follows 

 closely the consumption of infective cream, all of which came from 

 the one implicated dairy. " Milk which was boiled," he writes, " did 



* The particular infectivity of cream in milk epidemics is referred to by Sir 

 R. Thorne Thome in his Milroy Lectures, 1891, p. 171. 



'^ Annual Report of Medical Officer, Bedfordshire County Council, 1902, pp. 

 60-62. 



