The bearing of these experiments upon the sanitary question of permitting the use of these preservatives in foods, is self-evident. Prof. Leffman says: “Their use is scarcely allowable under any circumstances, and certainly only when the nature of the preservative and the amount is distinctly stated.” The use of saccharine as a sweetening agent must be looked upon as deleterious to health, and ought to be forbidden by sanitary authorities.
MILK AND SCARLATINA.
In a recent number of the Journal, we published an abstract of the reported investigations of Mr. Power, Dr. Cameron and Dr. Klein of a disease among cows, which they believed had caused scarlatina among persons using the milk. The conclusions reached by these gentlemen seemed so startling that the Agricultural Department of the Privy Council began an investigation of the disease. The investigation was given into the hands of Dr. Cruikshank, whose reports are published in the British Medical Journal of December 17, 1887, and January 21, 1888.
We have only space here to reproduce the conclusions reached by Dr. Cruikshank, which are as follows:
1. The nature of the contagium of scarlet fever is unknown.
2. The micro-organism regarded by Dr. Klein as this contagium is the streptococcus pyogenes.
3. Streptococcus pyogenes is found sometimes in company with staphylococcus pyogenes aureus, as a secondary result in scarlet fever and many other diseases.
4. A streptococcus was first observed in scarlet fever by Crooke, later by Löffler, Huebner and Bahrdt; but its exact relation to scarlatina, and its undoubted identity with the streptococcus from pus and puerperal fever, was definitely established in 1885 by Frankel and Freudenberg.
5. Both the Wiltshire and Hendon cow diseases were called cow-pox by the people on the farms.
6. Both diseases correspond in their clinical history.