Fever from Milk

Some 12,000,000 people in the U.S. are infected with the germs of a strange, lingering, milk-borne disease called undulant fever (brucellosis).* So wrote Health Officer Harold Jerome Harris of Westport, N.Y. last week in a full-fledged book on the subject (Brucellosis; Hoeber; $5.50).

Undulant fever may smolder for years, suddenly flare up into a complex disease resembling typhoid, malaria or tuberculosis. It is caused by any of three germs of the group Brucella (named after Sir David Bruce, who discovered the strain in 1886). Brucellae infect cattle, sheep, goats and pigs, cause a disease known as contagious abortion. Between 11 and 20% of all U.S. cattle are infected, causing a yearly loss to farmers of some $80,000,000. The disease is transmitted to man through milk, butter, cheese, and through handling of infected carcasses; it is not passed from one person to another.

Anyone who lives in the country and drinks unpasteurized milk from an infected cow, or pours a spot of tainted cream in his coffee, is liable to come down with a low fever and vague pains. He may feel fine every morning, but in the afternoon his temperature soars, and he gradually loses strength. This may keep up for years. Symptoms range all the way from mild backaches to bone and nerve infections, heart disease, insanity. Hardly an organ in the body is safe from invasion. Victims of brucellosis may be suspected of having tuberculosis, meningitis, arthritis, influenza, glandular disorders. Dr. Harris' five-year-old daughter, who suffered for many months from serious kidney trouble was primarily sick with brucellosis. Although it maims its victims, brucellosis seldom kills them.

Dr. Harris warns physicians in rural districts to keep an eye out for cattle epidemics, watch the milk supply. Whenever they are puzzled over a diagnosis, he believes they should try to culture Brucellae from a sample of the patient's blood, or use a skin test which shows whether the germ is present. Treatment is complex, depends on the symptoms. Best specific remedies: 1) injections of a specially prepared vaccine made from dead Brucellae; 2) sulfanilamide. Treatment must be continued, for a long period of time, for often a patient who seems to recover comes down with the same fever four or five years later.

Best treatment, says Dr. Harris, is prevention. He suggests that undulant fever should be prosecuted as bovine tuberculosis now is: let Federal inspectors track down all infected animals, kill them, recompense the farmers. He also believes that States should pass laws enforcing pasteurization of all milk.

* On the island of Malta, British soldiers who drank infected goats' milk came down with the disease. Until recently it was widely known as Malta fever.

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