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Before concluding these general and prefatory remarks, I think it
right to say a few words on the subject of certain outbreaks of disease
due, it is not unreasonably believed, to a contaminated condition
of that important article of diet, milk. It is true that the facts
to which I am about to advert belong rather to the sanitary history
of the current year than to 1874 ; I feel, however, that it would
not be right to defer the publication of them, and the subject can
be referred to again, if necessary. With reference first, then, to
scarlet fever, a remarkable outbreak occurred in the month of
June (1875) in South Kensington. Within sixty hours after a
dinner party of sixteen in one of the most splendid streets in the
metropolis, and in a house which had no sanitary defect and no
infected inmates, six of the party were prostrate with scarlet fever.
There was a large assemblage at the " at home " after the dinner,
and four or five of the guests were stricken either with primary
scarlatina or with characteristic sore throat. Some of the servants
and others, likewise, were similarly affected. A vigorous enquiry
excluded all suspicion of personal contagion as the cause of
the outbreak. The one fact clearly proved was that all the
sufferers had partaken of cream in some form or other,
cream being of course more largely consumed at the dinner
than at the "at home." Many persons, doubtless, who
partook of cream escaped, and their immunity may be accounted
for in a variety of ways ; but it is certain that every one
who was attacked had partaken of cream. There were several
curious not to say crucial cases, pointiug to the cream as the nidus
of infection. But how the contaqium found its way into the milk.
pot, if there, is a question that has hitherto baffled enquiry. The
dairy—in town, but not in Kensington—whence the offending fluid