y
milk, although its occurrence is not so frequent as that of typhoid
fever. Not long since, the writer was much interested in an epidemic of
this sort described by a physician who was convinced that the bacteria
responsible for the mild form of the disease occurred largely in the
nose and throat passages. He noted that as the result of these growths a
constant exudation from both passages was present, and that a man with
this disease, working over the milk, might easily allow the milk to be
polluted by this exudate dropping from his nose.

The result was a general distribution of a mild form of diphtheria among
those using the milk.

_Scarlet fever._

Many examples have also been given of the distribution of scarlet fever
through the agency of milk, the specific contagion probably being
discharged by the patient from his nostrils, mouth, or from the dry
particles of skin so characteristic of this disease. Unfortunately, mild
cases of scarlatina are very apt to occur, so mild that a physician is
not called in, and the only positive proof of the disease consists in
the subsequent "peeling," although the nasal passages may have been
alive with germs.

_Tuberculosis._

So far as tuberculosis is concerned, nothing seems to be definitely
proved. There is little fear of milk becoming infected from tuberculous
patients or of the disease being transmitted through milk from one
person to another, as with the three other diseases mentioned. The
possibility of infection here lies in the fact that a cow, like man, is
susceptible to tuberculosis as a disease, and undergoes the same course
of prolonged suffering and death. The interesting question is whether
the disease may be transmitted from a cow to a man through the cow's
milk. With all the refinements suggested by science as to the virulence
of the disease thus transmitted, with a study of the comparative
symptoms of the two diseases, of the progress of the disease in the cow
when the germs are found in the milk, and of the possibility of
eliminating these germs by heating or otherwise, the danger from
diseased cows is still unsettled.

So far as present knowledge goes, it is probably conservative to say
that although tests made on cows by inoculation with tuberculin show
that a large proportion of the animals in the various dairy herds are
more or less affected by tuberculosis, yet only a small proportion of
the milk from such cows shows the presence of the tuberculosis