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38
The Bacillus enteritidis Gaertner was first found by Gaertner to be present
in the meat of a cow which had suffered severe diarrhoea for two days before
she was killed. The twelve persons who ate the meat raw all became sick,
while of those who ate of the cooked meat a large percentage were also affected.
The microbe was found in the meat of the cow and also in the spleen of a
person who had died from the effects of the poison. It proved fatal to
animals, and good meat inoculated with it and kept for some hours had the same
toxic effects.
It has since been found in meat in investigating outbreaks of ptomaine
poisoning, and is generally derived from cattle or pigs.
It is probable, therefore, that it gains access to the milk either directly from
the cow, or indirectly through the excrement of cattle or pigs. The
opportunities for such contamination exist abundantly in the majority of
farmyards.
Under the ordinary conditions of dairy farming, faecal pollution is always
more or less present in milk, but as Professor Delepine points out, under
ordinary conditions such contamination may exist without serious effects, but
when some animals in a herd are affected with intestinal inflammation,
A'irulent bacilli must frequently escape from their bowel, and infect more or
less directly a portion of the milk, when that fluid is not collected under
conditions of strict cleanliness.
Dr. Klein lays stress on the extreme virulence of this organism, and points
out that although it exists in small quantities only in the samples examined,
it must be remembered that under the influence of an increased temperature
it would multiply very rapidly, and might give rise to the most serious
consequences.
Warm weather, and the keeping of milk warm for some time for infant
feeding, would tend to bring about a most dangerous condition of things, and
it is probable that this microbe, however it may obtain an entrance into the
milk, is, at any rate, one of the main factors in producing that form of
infantile diarrhoea so fatal in hot weather, especially when care and cleanliness
are not rigidly observed.
Dr. Eustace Hills points out that " during the last twenty years, while the
"general death rate has progressively declined, the infantile mortality has
"not shared in the decline to any appreciable extent. Since the infantile
14 mortality has not been influenced by the improvement in the sanitation and
"in the water supply which has taken place in most of the larger towns
"during this time, it must be due to other conditions which so far have
"undergone no alteration.
Cellular
Toxins by
Vaughan and
Novy.