314 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



In the 1893 cholera epidemic many visitors to Oleethorpes took cholera at this 

 seaside health resort and carried the disease to various inland towns and places. 



THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC AT ST. PETERSBURG, FROM EATING BAD "FISH." 



Doubtless, as the doctors declare, the long- severe orthodox Russian church fast, 

 which being - in full force (December 1G, 1893) and will remain so up to Christmas, 

 1893, has caused the poorer classes to eat bad " fish," producing intestinal disorders 

 and increasing the winter abating cholera. It must be recollected that the exception- 

 ally extreme mild winter weather has thawed the naturally frozen dead fish, making 

 them dangerous food. The St. Petersburg, 1893, cholera epidemic had almost subsided 

 till towards the middle of December, 1893, when a large number of soldiers and other 

 people attended a colossal banquet at the winter palace on the occasion of the annual 

 feast of the military order of St. George, which took place early in December, and 

 subsequent to this several thousands of the guests who had eaten at the fete in the 

 palace were attacked with cholera symptoms. 



Early in January, 1894, at a St. Petersburg Orphan Institute, a rapidly spreading 

 epidemic appeared, which within a week assailed 194 out of 200 inmates, or only 

 spared 3 per cent of these residents. This attack was attrib uted to the consumption 

 of fish contaminated with cholera bacilli from infected water. 



Like the 1893 winter epidemic of cholera at Metleben, in Saxony, and confirmed 

 by Professor Uffelrnaun's laboratory experiments, these united facts show the resist- 

 ance of cholera bacilli to cold. 



THE PLAGUE IN ASTRAKHAN. 



Astrakhan is the seat of the sturgeon and its caviare industries, The following 

 remarks quoted from my papers in the " Practitioner " of 1880, show how foul fish 

 may cause " filth " fevers. 



During the winter of 1878 and 1879 the plague visited Astrakhan. Towards the 

 latter half of November the real winter in Astrakhan begins, when its rivers are 

 frozen over, whilst the temperature is often some 10° Reaumur below the freezing-point 

 of water. In Astrakhan province most of the people seem well to do, but a fearful 

 want of cleanliness is here as strikingly characteristic as in other parts of Russia. Iu 

 the city of Astrakhan most of the streets are without pavement. There are no fresh- 

 water springs, and the water supply is drawn from the fouled branches of the Volga. 



The laborers employed in fish salting exist under very miserable conditions. In 

 many places they dwell in cavities hollowed in the earth, or in caverns. The price of 

 bread being beyond their means, they subsist chiefly on the leavings of the inferior 

 parts of the prepared fish. Formerly Government rules enforced that the unused 

 remains of the prepared fish should be thrown directly into the water, but now these, 

 collected and accumulated in masses, are left to rot in and about the banks of the 

 rivers under the heat of sometimes an almost tropical sun. Further, the vats used for 

 salting fish are never properly and systematically cleaned. It is the custom merely to 

 add more salt from time to time. The local atmosphere is further vitiated by many fat- 

 boiling, fish-oils, blubber, isinglass, etc., works. 



During the five years preceding the outbreak of plague in 1878, in Astrakhan, 

 enteric fever, measles, and smallpox had been epidemic, whilst scarlet fever raged in 





