Bread, bakehouses, and bacteria : reprints of various papers / by F. J. Waldo and David Walsh.

  • Waldo, Frederick Joseph, 1852-
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bread, bakehouses, and bacteria : reprints of various papers / by F. J. Waldo and David Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    17/76 (page 11)
    certain that the heat of the oven, which would undoubtedly kill most organisms, is sufficient to destroy their much hardier spores* The subject is under scientific investiga- tion ; but meanwhile it is open to reasonable surmise whether epidemics may not, in some cases, be due to con- taminated bread. Moreover, when the loaf is brought out of the oven into a foul bakery, its surface is exposed to any typhoid or other germ that may be at hand. In any case, the burden of proof to the contrary rests with the cham- pions of the underground bakeries. Perhaps those gentle- men will kindly ponder over the above unpleasant contingencies with regard to germs. Moreover, since the well-being of the journeyman does not figure to any great extent in their literature, it may be well to ask their careful attention to the following object-lesson. There can be no doubt that the health of the average journeyman baker is broken, and his life shortened. He is an old man at forty—thin, bloodless, often flat-footed, and a martyr to rheumatism; he is subject to asthma, bron- chitis, and consumption, owing to the foul air and the extremes of temperature in which he works ; he is liable to eczema and other skin diseases ; and, in three cases out of four, is the victim of grave internal injuries from hauling about sacks of eighteen or twenty stone weight. In Dr. Ogle’s mortality tables of a hundred different occupations, he comes third in suicide, seventh in alcoholism, eleventh in diseases of the liver, and twelfth in nervous affections. Some of his troubles, no doubt, arise from the nature of his employment, but it may be confidently asserted that the main part of them is preventible. The question of the adequacy or otherwise of the existing * Since this article was written it has been shown that micro- organisms in dough are not necessarily killed by baking. See paper, p. 28, ‘ Does Baking sterilize Bread ?’