372 PATHOGENIC BACTERIA IN MILK 



the poor, such contamination from flies and dirt is inevitable. 

 Probably in large measure the same applies to cow's milk. Hence 

 it appears that most, if not all, of the eighty per cent, of the milks 

 used in these fatal cases of diarrhoea obtained their injurious 

 properties at the home of the consumer. 



Delepine has urged that milk is infected at the farm or in 

 transit, as much of that which he examined and proved to be 

 virulent, had not been exposed to any influence attributable to a 

 consumer's home, but was in fact infective before it reached the 

 consumer.^ He considers the injurious properties of such milk is 

 due to faecal pollution and the action of B. colt. Newsholme con- 

 siders such contamination may be responsible for setting up 

 epidemics of diarrhoea occurring in connection with a particular 

 milk supply, as in the analogous case of epidemics of infectious 

 diseases, such as typhoid. But he holds that the ordinary sporadic 

 cases of diarrhoea, which carry off single children in large numbers 

 in urban districts, are due " chiefly to domestic infection of milk or 

 other foods, or to direct swallowing of infective dust." ^ With this 

 view we agree. Further, a study of the bacterial contents of milk, 

 from town and country, within twelve hours of its production, will, 

 we think, lend support to this view. We have a double pollution 

 of milk in actual practice, one originating at the farm, one brought 

 about subsequently. The latter may be produced by flies, or from 

 manure heaps (Waldo), or from dust in roads and yards of towns 

 (Richards), or from the generally filthy manipulation of the milk 

 from the time when it becomes the property of the milk seller to 

 the moment of consumption. It should not be forgotten in this 

 relation that stale milk contains toxic properties altogether apart 

 from, and in addition to, actual bacteria. It is possible that the 

 products of organismal action have a much greater effect in the 

 causation of diarrhoea than is generally supposed. 



Preventive Measures 



I. Among the preventive measures which these conclusions indi- 

 cate, cleanliness of cows, dairy-hands, and milk-cans or other milk 

 vessels, stands first, refrigeration of the milk second in importance. 

 Refrigeration of the milk, being more easily obtained than cleanli- 

 ness, should be insisted upon without delay. Similar measures 

 are also needed with regard to all things or persons coming in 



^ Jour, of Hyg., 1903, p. 86. 



^ Report on Health of Brighton, 1902, p. 50. 



