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3. For prescribing precautions to be taken for protecting
milk against infection or contamination.
4. For authorising a local authority* to make regulations
for the purposes aforesaid, or any of them, subject to
such conditions, if any, as the Privy Council prescribes."
Should the section pass into law, and be duly carried into effect
by the Privy Council, we may venture to hope, ere long, to see
some radical and necessary improvements effected, not only in the
construction of cowsheds and the storage for milk, but also in the
conduct of the business of those who deal in this most important
article of diet.
But, as I have pointed out in former reports, it will not be a
sufficient protection of the sanitary interests of the metropolis to
regulate by bye-laws the structure of its own cowsheds and dairies,
and the conduct of the business of its own dairymen, &c., for by
far the largest part of the milk supply is derived from the provinces,
and residents in the metropolis may at any time suffer from
sanitary defects in connection with country cowsheds, or dairies,
as well as from disease either in the cows, or in the families of the
people who send milk to town. An instance came to my knowledge
last year, which illustrates very well one of the dangers glanced at,
and proves the necessity of placing under supervisory regulations
all dairies and cowsheds from which milk is supplied for general
consumption. Several cases of illness (diarrhoea, vomiting, and
febrile symptoms) occurred in a number of families supplied with
milk from a particular dairy. An analysis of the milk showed that
it had evidently been watered to the extent of about ten per cent.
On the farm being visited from which the supply of milk was
drawn, it was found that one of the cows had been and was
suffering from some form of diarrhœa, and that her milk was
being sent up to the London market; the milk, however, yielded
a large percentage of solids, and did not, when drank, produce
any sickness. The water used to cool the milk was very foul
and taken from a pump supplied by drainage from the farmyard.
The water when mixed with milk and drank (by the
proprietor of the London dairy) produced violent sickness in a
very short time. The average milk of the farm, when analysed,
showed a higher percentage of solids than the milk as received
in London, showing pretty clearly—physiologically and chemically—that
it had been reduced with the fouled product of the
pump. It need hardly be added that if there had chanced to be
any typhoid fever at the farm very serious results might have
*The Metropolitan Board of Works is the "local authority" for the whole of
the metropolis, excepting the City of London. There is an advantage in this, viz.,
that the ''regulations," when made, will be of a uniform character. This bill, it
may be mentioned, passed into law at the end of the Session, but it does not come
into operation till the 30th September.