Bacteria: Especially as they are related to the economy of nature, to industrial processes, and to the public healthNewman, George, Sir
Science
Bacteria: Especially as they are related to the economy of nature, to industrial processes, and to the public health
Newman, George, Sir
Bacteria; Bacteriology
It may be pointed out that specific typhoid is not a disease of
animals; consequently no danger need be apprehended from milk if it
is properly cared for _after_ it comes from the cow. Typhoid milk is
almost invariably due to the addition of typhoid-infected water,
either by way of adulteration or in the process of washing out the
milk-cans. Cases have, however, been recorded in which there has been
direct transmission to the milk from a person convalescing from the
disease, and also indirect transmission by a milker serving also in the
capacity of nurse to a patient in his own family.
Though the typhoid bacillus appears not to have the power of
multiplying in milk, it has the faculty of existing and thriving in
milk, even when it has curdled or soured, for a considerable time, and
may thus infect milk products like butter and cheese. But infection by
milk products may be eliminated as of too rare occurrence to deserve
attention. The bacillus does not coagulate the milk like its ally
the _Bacillus coli communis_, which is a much more frequent and less
injurious inhabitant of milk.
_Cholera._ The cholera bacillus, as we have already pointed out, is
unable to live in an acid medium. Hence its life in milk is a limited
one, and generally depends on some alkaline change in the milk. Heim
found that cholera bacilli would live in raw milk from one to four
days, depending upon the temperature. D. D. Cunningham, from the
results of a large number of investigations in India, concludes that
the rapidly developing acid fermentations normally or usually setting
in, connected with the rapid multiplication of other common bacteria
and moulds, tend to arrest the multiplication of cholera bacilli, and
eventually to destroy their vitality. Boiling milk appears, on the
contrary, to increase the suitability of milk as a nidus for cholera
bacilli, partly by its germicidal effect upon the acid-producing
microbes, and partly because it removes from the milk the enormous
numbers of common bacteria, which in raw milk cause such keen
competition that the cholera bacillus finds existence impossible.
Professor W. J. Simpson, lately the Medical Officer of Health for
Calcutta, has placed on record an interesting series of cholera cases
on board the _Ardenclutha_, in the port of Calcutta, which arose from
drinking milk which had been polluted with one quarter of its volume
of cholera-infected water. This water came from a tank into which some
cholera dejecta had passed. Of the ten men who drank the milk four
died, five were severely ill, and one, who drank but very little of
the milk, was only slightly ill. There was no illness whatever amongst
those who did not drink the milk.
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