280 
RELATIONS OF FOOD AND DISEASE. 
“As soon as the murrain was known by Her Majesty's 
Government to have reached Kowno, Tauroggan, and other 
places in the vicinity of the Prussian frontier, an order in 
Council was issued forbidding the importation of cattle* 
and of hides, horns, hoofs, fodder, or other articles likely to 
be vehicles for conveying the contagion into this country, 
from any port in the Baltic east of Denmark, thus preventing 
all possible danger of the importation of this disease, so long 
as it shall be confined to the eastern frontier districts of 
Prussia. In addition, however, to this precaution, the greatest 
watchfulness over the importation of cattle is maintained by 
the veterinary inspectors of the Board of Customs, both at 
London and the other ports of importation. 
“ 1 have the honour to be, sir, 
“ Your obedient servant, 
“E. Headlam Greenhow, M.D., 
“Lecturer on Public Health at St. Thomas’s 
Hospital, &c. 
“London ; April 11 .” 
THE RELATIONS OE FOOD AND DISEASE. 
In considering the subject of diseased animal food, in our 
last number, we referred incidentally to the question, whether 
diseased structures can or do convey disease to the human 
body receiving them as sustenance ? 
This question is one surrounded with difficulties. It must 
be met fairly and frankly, it must be answered scientifically, 
it must be answered positively. 
Looking at the subject in its simple form, the evidence, 
a priori, would be strongly in favour of the suspicion that, by 
the medium of diseased milk as food, almost any poison may 
be transmitted from the body of one animal into that of 
another. Through her milk the syphilitic wet-nurse trans- 
mits in some cases the disease to the suckling child. Through 
the milk secretion every soluble vegetable and mineral poison 
is easily transmissible. We have ourselves thus detected the 
transmission of antimony, mercury, and iodine, from parent 
to offspring ; and we think it possible that in one case of 
cholera in an infant at the breast, the disease was directly 
conveyed by the same channel from the suffering mother. 
If there be, then, any truth in these propositions, it should 
obtain that the milk of diseased cows, taken as it often is 
uncooked, must needs be a prolific source of disease in the 
human race. . / 
