320 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



wet, it is kept artificially soaked and sodden with water or melting ice, or both. What 

 butcher would so ill-treat his meat '! 



Only after the fish is sold, the trade then gut the fish, which is already too stale 

 to bleed, as the blood is mostly clotted and usually more or less decomposed. Their 

 so-called cleaning, if aay, consists in placing the "fish" in a small tub or pail con- 

 taining a super- saturated solution of fishy filth and offal, reeking with almost every 

 obtainable form of putrid bacteria, and the putrid products of parasitic worms and 

 their eggs, etc. Fish costermougers or itinerant fish- venders, frequently carry on this 

 offensive trade at the very doors of -their customers, a practice which ought to be illegal 

 and punishable. 



Meat, etc., can not be successfully dressed near a foul gully, cesspool, drain, dung- 

 hill, dust bin or other receptacle containing putrefactive bacteria and their products. 



Fish decomposes with extraordinary rapidity, partly because its shor-ter, lighter, 

 looser muscular fibers both contain more and absorb additional moisture more readily 

 and abundantly than is the case in the denser, longer, stronger muscular fibers found 

 in meat, game, poultry, etc. 



FISHY ODORS. 



An ancient Tuscan proverb accuses fish and guests of stinking from the third day. 



The filthy but frequent habit of our costermougers and itinerant fishmongers of 

 "dumping" or depositing their fish offal and fish refuse on the road is pregnant with 

 danger, especially during warm wet weather. In 1890 I published the fact that around 

 bacterial Billingsgate, if a street stone be removed a horrid overpowering stench 

 arises from the local foul festering fishy filth having supersaturated the soil. 



A Billingsgate fish salesman once said: 



The smell of tish in a market would permeate every part and room of the neighborhood for a 

 quarter of a mile round. You can have no idea of the tentativeness of the smell, and the people 

 would be poisoned. A short time ago I went to the theater and sat behind several ladies. In about 

 half an hour I heard, "Dear me! What a strong smell of sprats!" 



It is evident that in the theater this man must have carried about with him the 

 putrefactive bacteria of foul fish, which proved so offensive to the ladies in front of 

 him. In other words, as soon as the heat and closeness of the theater made him 

 warm and perspiring, then the fishy bacteria and their products gave out their putre- 

 factive characteristic odor. 



Shakespeare was familiar with the " very ancient and fish-like smell" of such 

 putrefying matter. 



In 1888 whilst traveling from the North Cape, in northern Norway, we visited for 

 less than half an hour a local whale factory. On returning to our steamer, which was 

 continually moving quickly southwards, nevertheless for about five days the offensive 

 smells of the decomposing whale stuck to our boots, clothes, hands, etc. 



Passing nausea, sometimes accompanied by vomiting may be caused by merely 

 smelling putrid fish and "fish" offal. 



The public-health (London) act 1891, by section 131, paragraph 1, provides that 

 "Where any trade, etc., causing effluvia is certified to be a nuisance, etc., (1) by the 

 local medical officer of health, or (2) by any two legally qualified medical practition- 

 ers, or (.'J) by any ten inhabitants of the district, and the complaint laid before the 

 local sanitary authority, theu such authority shall make a complaint to the local petty 



