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41. Infection by Sewer Gas.—The possibility of the infectivity
of the milk coining from sewer gas would be disregarded by
many, but in spite of recent researches as to the absence of
pathogenic germs in sewer gas, there is no getting away from
the multitude of evidence that disease (especially Enteric
Fever) is conveyed directly in this way, and indirectly through
the pollution of food. In the number of the British Medical
Journal above quoted, Dr. Hart refers to an outbreak in
Cornwall, reported by Dr. Ballard of the Local Government
Board : —
Typhoid dejecta found their way into "a drain which had
aerial connection with the room of a dairy farm in which the
milk was stored on shelves, with extension of the disease as a
result in the dairyman's family and an unknown number of
his customers."
At the Plumstead dairy the sewer gas only had connection
with the room where milk was stored through the window of
a cellar or by the door of a can house. There was also no
evidence or probability of the drain or sewers containing
Enteric dejecta, no case having been reported in the street
for some years. So that on the whole I am inclined to
regard sewer gas as a possible source of infection, though
less probable than the tank water.
42. Cows as the Source of Infection.—Finally, could the
infection have been in the milk as it came from the cows ?
Two veterinary surgeons pronounced the cows healthy. But
as one of them was suspected to have drunk water contaminated
with sewage, while out at grass about a month
previously, it was killed, and examined pathologically and
bacteriologically at the Brown Institute, but with a negative
result. If cow malady can be excluded, the tank water
remains as the most probable explanation of the epidemic.