Year: 1878

The London Times says the necess;-
ty for periodical and thorough III
spection of dairy farms and dairies has
| just been forcibly illustrated at Croy-
don. For considerable time, until
! quite recently, the town has been free
from typhoid fever, but in August q
number of cases occurred, chiefly in
the eastern division of the district. The
medicalo fficer of health, being instruct
ed to investigate the cause of this out
break, has just presented to the local
board report on the subject, in which
he states that, early IN the inquiry, he
found that the cases occurred in houses
supplied with milk by one or other of
two dairies, and further inquiry showed
that these two dairies were worked to-
| gether as one.


Taking all the twenty-nine cases OF
fever which occurred, he found that
| twenty-four had milk from this special
| supply, while the other five cases had
milk from five other sources. This
special incidence in one milk supply
the medical officer considered was far
too great to be matter of chance, and
pointed ccnclusively, in his opinion, to
milk as the distributor of the disease.
AS milk by itself has never been shown
to be capable of producing snterie fe-
yer, but in several well-known in
stances impure water distributed with
the milk has produced severe epidem-
| les of enterie fever, it is reasonable to
suppose that in this instance impure
water was mixed with the milk, either
by design or accident, and so caused
the outbreak.


There is not any actual evidence Of
the addition of water in the present in
stance, although in each of the farms on
which the cows were grazing at the
time a source of extremely impure wa
ter was accessible, and if not added
actually to the milk, may have been
used for rlnsing the milking pals.
There is no longer any danger from
this milk; the COWS are now on the
farm, and the source of impure water
has been closed by the advice of the
medical officer. To prevent any spread
of the epidemic the sewers and drains
have been daily flushed with disinfec-
tants, and up to the present time no
fresh cases have been heard of such as
would indicate any further extension
of the disease.


This limited outbreak, which has
been so quickly traced to it's origin, is,
however, exceedingly instructive, and
it is thought that 1t serves to explain,
in some measure, similar outbreak
which occurred at Croydon in 1875, but
which, until now, has been unaccount-
ed for. The board of health, it is said,
has power under existing acts of Par
lament to inspect COW sheds but not
dairies.


DIR. A. Carpenter stated to the Croy-
don Board of Health that he has known
of case in which fever of the typhoid
kind was distributed in consequence of
the dairy in which the milk was kept
being in communication with the sew
er of the district, ard it unfortunately
happened that the communication was
not trapped. The milk was kept in the
dairy aud in the basement, and the trap
being opened and certain arrangements
being carried on with carbolic acid,
many of the customers of that milkman
returned the milk because it smelt of
tar. That told him at once the COM
municatlon between the sewer and the
dairy was open, and that the foul air
was finding its way into the dairy and
becoming absorbed by the milk, than
which nothing in nature Is 60 capable
of absorbing sewer gases. That dairy
was the means of distributing typhoid
germs, and yet the dairyman was inno-
cent of mixing foul water with his
milk.