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28
Professor Crookshank, of the Bacteriological Laboratory,
King's College, subsequently investigated a bovine affection
which he believes to have been the same as the Hendon cowdisease,
and arrived at the conclusion that it is cow-pox. He
states that this disease is not scarlatina in the cow; that the
milk of affected animals does not produce scarlet fever in man,
and that (as Professor Axe had previously assumed) infsction
in the Hendon milk must have been derived from "some
hitherto unascertained human source."
The reading of Professor Crookshank's paper at the
Pathological Society gave rise to a vigorous controversy, in which
each side stuck to the views of the respective principals in the
debate. The latest contribution to the discussion is supplied in
a report by Professor Brown, C.B., of the Agricultural Department
of the Privy Council, the most important item in which is
the statement that Professor Axe had ascertained, subsequently
to the issue of his first report, that there did exist at Hendon
" a possible source of infection (of scarlatina) by the agency of
persons who visited the Hendon cow-sheds, coming direct from
a fever district, even from premises in which scarlatina existed.
So that," he adds, "there is an alternative solution to the
problem," set by Mr. Power, who, it is assumed, but incorrectly
I believe, was unaware of the existence of scarlet fever in the
locality, and who, therefore, had stated that the Hendon cows
" had not acquired the power to cause scarlatina in any commonly
accepted way, as by agency of persons carrying scarlatina infection."
The question must be considered as still sub judice,
and for practical purposes we are left pretty much in the
position occupied prior to Mr. Power's report, for that the
poison of scarlet fever may be conveyed in milk infected by
human agency is a well-established fact. Against the danger thus
arising consumers have it in their power to guard by complying
with the oft-repeated advice to boil their milk. And for
the rest, we must at present trust to the good sense of milk
producers, who in these days, when sanitary knowledge is