MISCHIEF-MAKERS IN MILK. 215 



an unventilated building formerly used as a meat-market. The 

 ice-cream made from them poisoned eighteen persons. 



According to Prof. Vaughan, tyrotoxicon does not develop 

 below 60° Fahr., and is anaerobic — grows when air is excluded. 

 Some very simple measures, then, are preventive : 



1. Scrupulous cleanliness.* A little dry milk on the rim of a 

 can or vessel may breed the germ which will find a culture-ground 

 in fresh milk. 



2. A low temperature — below 60° Fahr. 



3. Ventilation in an untainted atmosphere. 



It is but just to say that these precautions are generally ob- 

 served by careful dairymen and cream manufacturers. There is 

 grave reason to fear, however, that they are not generally observed 

 after the milk reaches the consumer's hands. Also, the slightest 

 carelessness may affect seriously that class of the community 

 which does not speak for itself — the very youngest. 



The symptoms of cholera infantum f and poisoning by tyro- 

 toxicon have been proved experimentally to be very much alike, 

 if not identical. Even the post-mortem condition of children dying 

 with this complaint is shown by Prof. Vaughan to agree exactly 

 with that caused by tyrotoxicon-poisoning in animals. The enor- 

 mous per cent of deaths from the disease occurs between the ages 

 of six months and two years, proving conclusively that heat and 

 atmospheric conditions can not be the potent causes. There is 

 only one differing factor in the life of those under six months and 

 older children — the food. The younger class, then, must escape, 

 because a greater majority of them are naturally nourished. Sta- 

 tistics X prove with increasing testimony that all artificial feeding 

 is not only unnatural but hazardous, and to be successful requires 

 the most intelligent attention. However, if all mothers and nurses 

 could learn that milk exposed to foul or warm air for any length of 

 time may not only sour, but become the vehicle of a virulent poison, 

 perhaps the summer months would bear a better health record.* 



One word of warning may not be amiss. || Whenever a young 

 child is fed upon cow's milk, and this causes symptoms of dis- 

 agreement, the diet should be changed at once either to meat or 

 rice ; for, if the chief mischief-maker be at work, the best milk 

 will only furnish it with the medium in which it flourishes, and, 

 deprived of this, it will inevitably perish. 



* " Philadelphia Medical News," vol. 1, p. 6*76. 



f Prof. Vaughan's address before the New York Academy of Medicine, May, 1888. 

 " Philadelphia Medical News," June, 1888. 



\ "Of 591 cases in Liverpool only 28 had natural nourishment; of 341 in Leicester, 

 only two per cent" ("Philadelphia Medical News," June, 1887). 



* " Nine tenths of the mortality under one year of age is from preventable causes " 

 (Dr. Wood's address before the American Medical Association). 



|| "Sanitarian," vol. xvii, pp. 308-311. 



