MILK DIPHTHERIA. 339 



died and the other was killed. Such results might have been 

 anticipated as the result of injecting a large quantity of the toxic 

 products of the bacillus, but certain other phenomena were observed 

 to which importance was attached. On the fourth day, on one of 

 the cows an eruption on the teat was first noticed, consisting of 

 small vesicles passing into pustules and crusted ulcers. Examina- 

 tion of the contents of the vesicle revealed the bacillus. With 

 matter from the vesicles and pustules two calves were inoculated, 

 and a similar vesiculation produced at the seat of inoculation. 

 The milk of the cows was inoculated on nutrient gelatine, and 

 produced a culture of Bacillus diphtherise. The question naturally 

 arose whether this eruption had any connection with the original 

 experimental inoculation. No other cows in the locality from 

 which these cows were obtained had a similar eruption, and it was 

 taken for granted that it was the result of the experimental inocu- 

 lation. By accepting the possibility of this eruption being identical 

 with the chaps on the teats of the Oamberley cows, the theory was 

 gradually built up that cows suffer from diphtheria, which manifests 

 itself in the form of an eruptive disease of the teats, and that the 

 disease is conveyed in the milk to the consumers. 



In the original experiment the bacilli were found to have 

 multipUed abundantly in the tumour at the seat of inoculation. The 

 eruption might have been, as admitted by Klein, a symptom of the 

 work of the chemical poison, and the eUmination of the bacilli by the 

 milk is also possible ; but that there is in cows a vesicular disease of 

 the teats which is the origin of human diphtheria is not accepted by 

 veterinarians, and there is not sufficient evidence to justify the con- 

 clusion that the infectivity of the milk in epidemics of milk diphtheria 

 has been proved to be due to a morbid condition of the cow. 



