Before concluding these general and prefatory remarks, I think it right to say a few words on the subject of certain outbreaks of disease due, it is not unreasonably believed, to a contaminated condition of that important article of diet, milk. It is true that the facts to which I am about to advert belong rather to the sanitary history of the current year than to 1874; I feel, however, that it would not be right to defer the publication of them, and the subject can be referred to again, if necessary. With reference first, then, to scarlet fever, a remarkable outbreak occurred in the month of June (1875) in South Kensington. Within sixty hours after a dinner party of sixteen in one of the most splendid streets in the metropolis, and in a house which had no sanitary defect and no infected inmates, six of the party were prostrate with scarlet fever. There was a large assemblage at the “at home” after the dinner, and four or five of the guests were stricken either with primary scarlatina or with characteristic sore throat. Some of the servants and others, likewise, were similarly affected. A vigorous enquiry excluded all suspicion of personal contagion as the cause of the outbreak. The one fact clearly proved was that all the sufferers had partaken of cream in some form or other, cream being of course more largely consumed at the dinner than at the “at home.” Many persons, doubtless, who partook of cream escaped, and their immunity may be accounted for in a variety of ways; but it is certain that every one who was attacked had partaken of cream. There were several curious not to say crucial cases, pointing to the cream as the nidus of infection. But how the _contagium_ found its way into the milk-pot, if there, is a question that has hitherto baffled enquiry. The dairy—in town, but not in Kensington—whence the offending fluid was obtained was carefully scrutinised as to the state of health of the cows and of the employés, but no fact was elicited to explain the occurrence. {11} As bearing on this subject, I may remark that it is not very long ago that a number of cases of sore throat, occurring in families supplied from a certain dairy, were brought under my notice; and I ascertained that illness of a similar character had prevailed in the house of the dairyman.