London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

View report page

St James's 1879

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St James's, Westminster]

This page requires JavaScript

31
Sanitary authority, this case was only discovered
when the disease had run almost its entire course
under the conditions above described. I immediately
visited and inspected the premises and, under threat
of applying to the magistrate with a view to have
the milk seized and condemned, and thus indirectly
to stop the business, I succeeded in getting the
mother to remove the girl at once to the house of a
relative. This was at the end of February. I made
a careful examination of several specimens of milk
from the shop and it is only right to say that, examined
microscopically, the milk was in no way abnormal,
and that in point of cream and of solids it was
very good. But, that milk may be retailed to the public
under such conditions is a scandal which suggests
the desirability of regulating the conditions under
which milk and some other articles of food are now
distributed to the public. Ten other cases of
Typhoid occurred among the customers of this milk
shop, and these cases—though not sequential, in
point of time, to the case in the milk sellers own
family—are explainable on the hypothesis that
all were alike affected by polluted milk from this
shop. There is some reason to believe that the
girl at the milk shop had been ill off and on for
some two months before the case was discovered by
the Sanitary authority; but the following facts are