224 BACTERIA IN MILK AND MILK PRODUCTS 



posterior portion of the udder. In these particles was found a 

 bacillus which proved very pathogenic for mice and guinea-pigs, and 

 which corresponded to an organism isolated from the stools of the 

 patients.* 



In 1894 an outbreak occurred at Manchester/]- characterised by 

 diarrhaea, sickness, and abdominal pains. The cases numbered 160 

 in forty-seven houses, or just 50 per cent, of the houses served by one 

 and the same milk-seller. Eaw-milk drinkers were the chief sufferers, 

 and those not drinking the implicated milk did not suffer. Dr 

 Niven visited the farm whence the milk came, and found that it 

 was the milk from the farm itself, and not the added milk from a 

 more distant farm, which supplemented the farmer's stock that had 

 caused the epidemic, the home-farm milk only being sent into the 

 affected district. Near the farm were 40,000 tons of privy-midden 

 refuse. Two streams ran near the farm, meeting below, one fouled 

 by the drainage of the tip, and the other being contaminated with 

 sewage and with matter from a tripe-boiling place. The water used 

 for washing the milk -pails was tepid, and kept in a foul cistern. 

 The cows drank from a pool which received the drainage from the 

 cowshed midden. The stored milk could be readily contaminated 

 from emanations from the cowshed. Professor Dele"pine examined 

 the milk, and found B. coli communis abundantly present, and Dr 

 Niven elicited the fact that a cow affected with inflamed udder 

 (" garget ") had been removed from the farm and slaughtered. The 

 outbreak was attributed to milk in any case, and to the probable 

 infection of it by the diseased cow. But Delepine has pointed out 

 that it is more probable that the milk was contaminated with fsecal 

 pollution rather than infectious disease of the cow.| 



In 1895 and 1898 1| three outbreaks of epidemic diarrhoea 

 occurred amongst the patients at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, 

 traceable in the first two instances to milk, and in the third, to rice 

 pudding made with milk.lf On Sunday night, 27th October 1895, 

 an outbreak of diarrhoea affected 59 in-patients, all of whom had 

 recently taken milk, and from the evacuations the spores of B. enteri- 

 tidis sporogenes was isolated by -Klein. The patients suffered quite 

 irrespective of whether or not the milk had been boiled. Some 

 milk also, derived from the same source as the milk which had 

 caused the poisoning, was examined by Klein, and found to contain 

 the spores of the same organism. On Sunday, 6th March 1898, a 

 second outbreak of severe diarrhoaa occurred in this hospital, affect- 



* Deut. Med. Woch., vol. xviil, p. 14. 



t Annual Report of Medical Officer of Health of Manchester, 1894 (Dr Niven). 



I Jour, of Hygiene, 1903, vol. iii., No. 1, pp. 76, 77. 



Report of the Medical Officer of Local Government Board, 1895-96, pp. 197-204. 



II Ibid., 1897-98, p. 235. ' 



IT Ibid., 1898-99, p. 336. Lancet, 7th January 1899. 



