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of Lambeth, through the County Medical Officers of
Health, Veterinary Inspectors, Analysts and others
concerned, and Table IV. gives the results. The farms
are designated by the letters A to R, and the creameries
or milk factories by the Roman numerals I. to III.
respectively.
The infected farm was finally discovered in Sussex
(Farm G), where several cows were found to be ill, two
with mastitis, giving milk unfit for use, and others with
teat eruptions, and several milkers with sores on their
hands, and one cowman (also a milker) with an ulcerated
finger. The facts in regard to the last-mentioned (the
cowman) are specially interesting and noteworthy (see
Table VI.).
On further investigation, this cowman, who also
acted as a milker, was found to be suffering from an
indolent ulcer on the back of one of his fingers
the wound having commenced apparently with a scratch
received from a thorn about 15th September, 1913,
becoming ulcerated at the end of November, and
remaining so until the end of December, when
the finger, being a hindrance to the cowman's work
(milking), was amputated on December 27th, 1913,
The medical man in attendance suspected tuberculosis
or a malignant growth, but bacteriological
examinations of the amputated finger showed that the
ulcer was simply of an inflammatory nature, probably of
long-standing. Cell debris, micrococci, staphylococci,
dense leucocytic infiltration and fibrous induration were
noted on examination microscopically, but the ulcer was
found, on bacteriological examination, to be infected, also
with organisms indistinguishable culturally from true
diphtheria (Klebs-Loeffler) bacilli, which prove'd, on
. further examination, to be virulent, i.e., pathogenic to
animals, as shown by inoculation experiments carried out
on guinea pigs. There was no evidence found of tubercule,
syphilis or malignant growth. It was found, further,
that, prior to having his finger amputated, the cowman had
been at work assisting in milking the cows, with the ulcer
present upon his finger and simply wrapped round
with rag or bandage. The ulcer was, therefore,
diphtheria-infected and capable of adding germs to the
milk and, by inoculation, transferring them to the cows
and, through the cows, to the other milkers, one of whom
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