210 BACTERIA IN MILK AND MILK PRODUCTS 



supplied by these milk sellers became infected, and many of their 

 regular customers who drank the milk suffered from the disease. 

 (3) The same infected milk having been sold to two other milk 

 purveyors, some of the persons using the milk supplied by these 

 milkmen also suffered in a similar manner. (4) There is no 

 evidence that the disease spread in these districts in any other 

 way than through this milk.* 



4. Infection from the Air ly Dried Typhoid Excreta. At 

 Millbrook, in Cornwall, in 1880 (July September), an outbreak 

 occurred having a total number of cases of 91. In this instance part 

 of a slaughter-house not used as such but as a wash-house was 

 boarded off to constitute a dairy. On a shelf of this dairy the milk 

 was habitually set in pans, exposed to the air. In one corner of the 

 slaughter-house, nearest the dairy, was a badly trapped and very 

 offensive drain inlet. Close to this inlet ran the wooden partition 

 between the slaughter-house and the dairy, which near the inlet had 

 been long broken away. The drain was in communication with an 

 old square drain which had received typhoid excreta, so that the 

 infected sewer air from the inlet had free access to the dairy and the 

 exposed milk which stood in the dairy. There was evidence to show 

 that the drain was in a dry and " waterless " condition. Six cases of 

 typhoid occurred in the butcher's family.f A similar outbreak 

 occurred in county Durham in 1893. 



5. Infection from Contaminated Cloths and Clothes. At Barrow- 

 ford in Lancashire there occurred a typhoid epidemic in 1876. The 

 total number of cases was 57, all of whom drank the suspected milk. 

 The farmer had had typhoid fever in his house for two or three 

 weeks before the outbreak, and no precautions had been taken to 

 prevent the spread of the disease. The milk was left for some time 

 in the farm-house before being sold. The milk-tins were wiped 

 with the same " dish cloth " as that used among the fever patients. 

 The farmer himself nursed his children, and then went immediately 

 without disinfection amongst his cattle and milked them in the same 

 clothes he had worn whilst nursing his children. The cases occurred 

 within a very short space of time, and every one of them without 

 exception drank the milk from this farm. Twenty-five of the 

 patients were under ten years of age. There was no other typhoid 

 in the district. 



6. Infection owing to Cooling Milk in Water. At Springfield, 

 Mass., U.S.A., in 1892, an outbreak affecting 150 persons (25 of 

 whom died). Upon the farm supplying the implicated milk there 

 was one, and probably more than one, case of typhoid fever. The 

 farmer submerged his sealed milk-cans when full of milk, in the well 



* Report of Local Government Board, 1874, p. 92. 

 t Brit. Med. Jour., 1881, i., p. 20. 



