INLETS FOR INFECTION. ?Q 



of 1875 about a thousand visitors were assembled at Rye Beach, and 

 a considerable number were attacked with a series of symptoms which 

 led to the suspicion that they had consumed some noxious article. The 

 incidence of the disease was entirely confined to three hundred persons 

 occupying one of the large hotels. The sanitary state of this hotel is 

 said to have been exceptionally good, and, although suspicion seemed 

 at first to attach to the water-supply, yet the disease was found to have 

 affected many who, "having apprehended trouble from the use of 

 the water," which was strongly impregnated with salts of lime and 

 magnesia, " had carefully limited themselves since their arrival to other 

 beverages." Indeed, as the result of a careful process of elimination, 

 suspicion came at last to be directed to the ice furnished to the house. 

 The water obtained by melting the ice was discolored and charged 

 with suspended matter, and gave off a decidedly disagreeable odor ; 

 the atmosphere of the ice-house was offensive, and some persons who 

 had used the ice away from the hotel were found to have suffered in 

 the same way from violent illness. The ice in question had been de- 

 rived from a local pond, the water of which was found to have become 

 foul from long-continued stagnation ; one portion of the pond, measur- 

 ing about five hundred feet in length and one hundred and fifty feet 

 in width, was occupied by " a homogeneous mass of putrescent mat- 

 ter." A piece of ice, carefully cleansed from all surface impurities, 

 was then melted, and the water thus obtained was submitted to chemi- 

 cal analysis, the result being the detection in it of a quantity of " de- 

 caying organic matter." The use of the ice had also in the mean time 

 been discontinued, and coincident with its disuse " there was observed 

 an abrupt amelioration in the symptoms of nearly all who had hitherto 

 been ill." So, also, no fresh attacks occurred during the remainder of 

 the season. 



Even among the more educated classes there prevails an impres- 

 sion that even if water is contaminated it is purified by freezing. 

 Many experiments have, however, shown the fallacy of this view. In 

 some of these made recently by Mr. C. P. Pengra, an American chem- 

 ist, various organic matters (urea, albumen, etc.) were mixed with 

 water, and the specimens were gradually frozen. A certain amount 

 of purification did take place the ice containing thirty and even forty 

 per cent less organic matter than the unfrozen liquid. But a large 

 amount of the added pollution remained, and the investigator, though 

 expressing surprise that the purification had been as great as it was, 

 says that the experiments afford abundant proof that we ought not to 

 tolerate the indiscriminate collection of ice. 



These experiments do not, however, prove that the contagium of 

 an infectious fever can withstand the process of freezing, but as to 

 this we are not left in doubt. Dr. E. Klein, F. R. S., thus reports the 

 results of some of his experiments in freezing bacillus anthracis : " I 

 have exposed in a capillary pipette fluid full of spores to the influence 



