104 MILK HYGIENE 



meat, milk and dairy products, the disease is communi- 

 cable to man. It may develop mildly with severe vomit- 

 ing and difficult breathing as the prominent symptoms, 

 or, on the other hand, it may end in death, preceded by 

 subnormal temperature, paralysis of a great part of the 

 body and progressive dyspnoea. Death approaches 

 imperceptibly and without the supervention of rigor 

 mortis. This mysterious disease, which was formerly 

 attributed to poisonous plants eaten by the cattle with 

 their food and whose toxic principles were supposed to 

 be secreted in the milk, is probably, according to the pre- 

 ceding, an infectious disease. 



V. CONTAMINATION WITH ORGANISMS OF 

 SPECIFIC DISEASES OF MAN 



Milk may be contaminated with specific organisms 

 from persons suffering with infectious diseases. Such 

 contamination may take place during milking, during its 

 handling on the farm or, later, while it is being handled 

 or stored in the dairy or market-place. Sometimes this 

 occurs from sick persons coming directly into contact 

 with the milk, sometimes it occurs in an indirect way. 

 The method of contamination differs in respect to dif- 

 ferent diseases, since infectious material may come not 

 only directly or indirectly from persons but may also 

 come from the water used for cleansing the milk vessels. 



In the literature of recent years, there are numerous 

 reports of very significant epidemics supposed to be due 

 to infection carried by milk. Such " milk epidemics ' 

 are especially frequent in England and America and this 

 may, no doubt, be accounted for by the fact that it is 

 not so customary in England and America to boil milk 

 as it is, for example, in Denmark and Germany. Most 

 of the epidemics relate to typhoid fever, diphtheria and 

 scarlet fever ; but cholera and several other diseases may 



