p. 685 | Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 11, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 43.

Health and Temperance.

Cause and Prevention of Scarlet Fever.

A REPORT has been issued by the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, the importance of which, as regards the etiology and prevention of a wide-spread infectious disease, deserves the most careful attention of sanitary officers and the general public alike. Hitherto the general assumption prevailed that infection with scarlet fever has always had its origin from the human subject, that is to say, that scarlet fever is always transmitted to the human subject from a human being affected with the malady, either by direct contagion in its wider sense or through milk, cream, etc., previously contaminated with the contagium derived from a human source. In the present report we have an account of an extensive outbreak of scarlet fever in the north of London at the end of last and the beginning of the present year among the consumers of milk derived from a particular farm at Hendon. The first part of the report of the medical officer contains an account by W. H. Power, Inspector to the Medical Department of the Local Government Board, of an investigation into this outbreak, and the evidence brought forward by Mr. Power is absolute and conclusive; it proves, by a chain of circumstantial evidence as complete as can be wished, that this particular outbreak of scarlatina was transmitted by milk which could not have been previously contaminated from a human source.

Moreover, Mr. Power proves that certain milch cows, recently added to the dairy and affected with a particular malady, were the source from which the contagium had been derived; further, that as this malady once introduced by a few cows into the dairy spread to other milch cows, so the amount of milk containing the contagium, and also the number of cases of scarlatina among the consumers, increased, and as the milk supply was discontinued so the spread of scarlet fever abated.

The malady with which the cows were affected consisted chiefly in a particular kind of ulceration of the teats and udder, and perhaps some slight cutaneous disorder. As regards the general health, the feeding and milking capacity, the cows seemed to present very little alteration.

The second part of the report contains an account by Dr. Klein of the minute pathology and etiology of this cow disease. In the first place, Dr. Klein ascertained that the local disease on the teats and udder is inoculable in its specific characters into healthy calves; secondly, that the cows affected by the local disease of the udder and teats were at the same time affected with a disease of the viscera, as proved by the post-mortem examination, in many respects similar to a mild form of scarlet fever in the human subject.

From the ulcers of the cow Dr. Klein isolated by cultivation a streptococcus or chain-micrococcus, possessed of distinct and special characters, both as to morphology and mode of growth in various nutritive media, particularly in milk; in this latter it grows in a peculiar manner, and very luxuriantly. With artificial cultures of this streptococcus a disease was produced in calves by subcutaneous inoculation, which bears a striking resemblance to scarlet fever in man. The conclusion is thus forced on us that this streptococcus is identical with the materies morbi; further, that the scarlatina produced in the human subject by the consumption of milk from the Hendon farm, was an experiment carried out on a large scale, of infection with a cultivation in milk of the above streptococcus; and lastly, that the milk of the cows affected with the specific ulcers of the teats and udders, became charged with the contagium by the hands of the milker during the act of milking.

Although there are many details still wanting to complete the research, particularly those regarding the transmissibility of scarlatina from the human subject to the cow, there is sufficient evidence at hand already to warrant the hope that by a proper and effectual mode of superintending milk farms, it will be possible to considerably limit this dire scourge. A suggestion that at once presents itself is this: Granted that the above-mentioned streptococcus is the real cause of the malady, there is no reason to doubt that boiling the milk would effectually destroy its life and infective power just as is the case with all micrococci. True, the danger to contract scarlatina would hereby not be altogether annihilated, since cream cannot thus be disinfected, and since scarlet fever can unquestionably be contracted from a human source, but it must be obvious from this conclusive report that milk of itself coming from an infected cow plays a considerable rôle in conveying scarlatina from the cow to the human subject.—Nature.