Somebody is always adding a new hygienic terror to life.
This time it is Dr. Klein, who on Friday week delivered a lecture at the Royal Institution, showing that we may catch scarlet-fever from milk which has not been polluted directly or indirectly by the fever in the human subject. Cows, he alleges, are liable to scarlet-fever, though in them the disease is not serious ; but if we catch it from them through their milk, it becomes serious in us. Careful official inquiry appears to prove that this has been repeatedly the case, and that an epidemic of scarlet- fever among cows, not caught in any way from human beings, may be followed by a burst of scarlet-fever among the customers of the farm. Even condensed milk of the cheaper kinds will convey the infection ; and Dr. Klein has found microbes in tine of such milk identical with the microbes detected in scarlet- fever patients. Milk, therefore, is an unsafe article of diet, more especially in London suburbs, and should, if possible, be avoided. If not, it should be heated up, Dr. Klein says, to 85° C., at which temperature the microbes die,—a fact which suggests that those who drink their tea very hot are wise men. For our part, we only hope that no doctor will discover living microbes in bread, for if he does, it will be necessary either to starve, or to live as our fathers did, in profound indifference to all hygienic counsels.
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