Abstract
A REPORT has just been issued by the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, the importance of which, as regards the etiology and prevention of a widespread 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, &c., 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 amongst 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 Mr. 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.
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The Etiology of Scarlet Fever . Nature 34, 213 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034213a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034213a0