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outbreak gave rise to, I found that the outbreak had a few ramifications to
the outside of the limited distriot I have mentioned, and that in fact to the
one and the same cause over 70 families owed an invasion of Typhoid.
The majority of those attacked passed through the disease in Islington, but
several were attaoked in various parts of the country, having carried away
the morbid cause in their system, although it did not operate until they
were fairly away from home. This is explicable by the period of
incubation of typhoid. The facts as to these latter cases were furnished me
courteously by the medical gentlemen who attended them, and with whom
I placed myself in communication. One of the remarkable features of the
outbreak was that, with few exceptions, the persons who suffered were not
of the class among whom fevers are most commonly observed, but were
persons in very comfortable positions in society, attended by private medical
men, and residing in some of the best houses in the parish. Altogether it
was exceptional and not least so in this, that, in consequence of the class of
persons attacked being such as it was, a large number of cases had occurred
and several deaths before I became at all aware of the extent to which it
was spread. Still as soon as the medical gentlemen here came to know that
I desired information, they furnished it with the greatest readiness and
evinced an interest in my investigation, which did not flag until the true
cause of the disaster was brought to light.
The enquiry occupied me unremitingly for several months and eventuated
in a discovery which imparts a serious public warning.
This discovery was, that the fever was confined to persons who had
consumed milk issued from one particular dairy, and that the typhoid
poison was distributed with the milk and taken with it into the systems of the
persons who used it. This was a conclusion which I could not have arrived
at without the assistance of the proprietor of the dairy, who, in a manner
that did him the highest honour, furnished me with a list of the customers
and houses supplied from the establishment. The list was as accurate as it
could be made at the time, and on comparing it with my list of typhoid
invasions, I found that the residents in one half of the houses supplied
had been attacked with typhoid. Since the enquiry has been completed and
the facts made public, other instances have been made known to me with
which I was not then acquainted, for I did not make enquiries from house
to house. In 70 families, there happened 175 cases, of which 30 died. Comparing
again the list of houses supplied with my mortuary records, I found
but three other deaths altogether to have occurred in these houses from any