Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles District]
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manifesting any signs of disease. This theory has been
to some extent supported bv some experiments made by
Dr. Klein, who has found that if a cow who lias recently
calved be inoculated with the poison of' human scarlatina,
she is affected by an ailment not accompanied by fever, or
by any alteration in the quantity or visible qualities of the
milk.
Mr. Power sums up as follows: "Upon the whole,
therefore, the conclusion became irresistible that this milk,
delivered from the farm at two separate country stations,
belonging to different railway companies, for consignment
to separate London termini, and distributed in widely
separated metropolitan districts, where it caused simultaneous
outbursts of scarlatina and throat illness, had
become infected at the farm whence it was derived. Accordingly,
attention was given to means whereby it might
have become infected at this farm.
"Inquiry to this end necessarily traversed ground already
gone over by the Medical Officer for St. Giles District,
and it further took into account a variety of additional
circumstances that might be hoped to assist in throwing a
light on the subject. Into the various steps of this investigation
I will not now enter, but will briefly state its
outcome. I satisfied myself that it was practically out of
the question that the milk at the farm had become infected
in any of the commonly-believed ways that require a
human subject as the source of infection; and I think it
altogether unlikely that common-place fouling of dairy
utensils by polluted water or the like, after such .fashion as
has heretofore served to account for specific pollution of
milk, can have here occurred. In the end I found myself,
as on a former occasion, called upon to face the question
whether or not actual cow conditions might have been