August 8, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



223 



with garget." The writer in his article on 

 morliiiic and infectious milk, Report of Health 

 Officer of the District of Columbia, 1895, re- 

 ferred to Professor Brown's observation pub- 

 lished in the Transactions of the Epidem. 

 Society of London, Vol. VIII., 1888-1889, p. 

 34, who, in speaking of a communicable udder 

 disease of the cow, said : " Whatever the dis- 

 ease really might be, it was at least certain 

 that the milk of cows suffering from it was 

 contaminated with pus and other morbid prod- 

 ucts which might very well be responsible for 

 human disease. * * * The condition of the 

 milk can be judged best from the remark of 

 a dairy boy, who said: 'They could not drink 

 the milk themselves and had sent it to London, 

 but they hoped the poor people there would 

 not suffer.'" Indeed, D. J. Fagan described, 

 in the British Medical Journal, Vol. II., 1869, 

 p. 489, a case of pseudo-membranous stomati- 

 tis produced by the milk of a cow with inflamed 

 udder, and after, Guillebeau, Adametz, Mace 

 and Hueppe found several pus-producing or- 

 ganisms in the milk of cows suffering from 

 garget, the writer in the paper already referred 

 to felt warranted in declaring that in all the 

 epidemics of scarlet fever and diphtheria' 

 which were traced to milk from cows suffer- 

 ing with some inflammatory lesions of the 

 udder, we have t.ypical instances of a strepto- 

 coccus and staphylococcus infection, and Grey 

 Edwards, in August, 1897, published cases of 

 follicular tonsilitis in which these organisms 

 were not only found in the suspected milk 

 and in the milk of a certain animal, but also 

 in the culture from the throat. We quite 

 agree with the author that the outlook for im- 

 proved milk supplies, in consequence of whole- 

 some agitation and public demand, is very 

 encouraging. 



Chapter XII. on certain uncooked foods, 

 meats, oysters, fruits, vegetables, etc., as ve- 

 hicles of infectious disease and the sanitary 

 significance of cooking is likewise of great 

 importance, as are the chapters on the pre- 

 vention and inhibition of infection and dis- 

 infection, and disinfectants. 



Part III. deals with some popular beliefs as 

 to certain special and peculiar causes of dis- 

 ease, and 'dwells briefly upon some of the 



more widespread of the fallacious notions or 

 half-truths of sanitary science, and defines ex- 

 plicitly the present attitude of the best opin- 

 ions of the time in regard to certain subjects 

 relating' to the public health commonly mis- 

 understood or misinterpreted.' Among the 

 topics discussed are the belief in dangers from 

 sewer gas, which he regards as very much ex- 

 aggerated, though he freely grants the possi- 

 ble efficiency of sewer gas as a general poison 

 and depressant. The writer, however, disap- 

 proves of the presentation of the subject mat- 

 ter in relation to wells, even at the risk of 

 being classed among the pseudo-sanitarians; 

 he feels disposed to regard most wells with 

 grave suspicion, for the simple reason that 

 family wells and privies are, alas, too often 

 dangerous neighbors. This comparatively 

 novel point of view has been forced upon us 

 by the numerous outbreaks of typhoid fever 

 spread through polluted wells. We also know 

 that typhoid fever is far more common in the 

 country than in cities, and as a result of a 

 general introduction of a common supply in 

 the country towns of Massachusetts in place 

 of that derived from individvial wells, a very 

 decided decline in 'typhoid fever has been 

 noticed. 



Again, the typhoid fever death rate at Mu- 

 nich at a time when that city was riddled with 

 cesspools and wells, was 210 per 100,000 of 

 population; with the introduction of sewers 

 and a pure water supply, the rate has fallen 

 to 3 per 100,000. 



Professor Sedgwick evidently has the ut- 

 most confidence in the filtering powers of the 

 earth, and deems it very unlikely that disease 

 germs survive in or pass even a few feet 

 through soil beyond a leaky cesspool. We 

 fully agree with him that the dangers of in- 

 fection from the top of the well have not 

 been sufficiently emphasized; on the other 

 hand, Drs. Abba, Orlandi and Eondelli, who 

 experimented on the filtration capacity of the 

 soil about the filter galleries of the Turin 

 water supply, found that cultures of Micro- 

 coccus prodigiosus poured with large volumes 

 of liquid into the ground at various points 

 made their appearance 200 meters away in 42 



