326 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



INFECTION OF FISH BY IMPURE PRESERVATIVES. 



Fish must be kept perfectly dry. and of course raeltiiisr ice or other added moist- 

 ure scrupulously avoided. 



When ice or melting ice is used for preserving food, as iu the fish trade, or for 

 drinking purposes, it should be made only from distilled water, where the receivers 

 are kept perfectly clean and the water or ice properly stored. 



The temperature at which artificial ice is made is probably much lower than that 

 in the case of natural ice; therefore in artificial ice the chances of killing by cold 

 traces of living organisms (bacteria, etc.) would be greater than in natural ice, espe- 

 cially that from small, shallow, dirty ponds at the freezing-point of water. Hence the 

 Paris police prefecture has recently (1893) forbidden the use of ice taken from certain 

 lakes and ponds in and about Paris, as it was found that such ice contained large 

 quantities of unhealthy organic materials and bacteria, rendering its use for table 

 purposes dangerous. 



In the United States several outbreaks of typhoid fever have been traced to the 

 use of infected ice taken from natural sources. 



As it seems almost impossible to satisfactorily test the purity of natural ice and 

 its freedom from organic tainted matter, one is driven to protest against the use of 

 natural ice. As our present law stands, any filthy water frozen into ice may be sold 

 for food and drinking purposes. In England there seems to be no supervision over 

 the ice used for food, and it does not appear to be provided for by any of our act** of 

 Parliament. I am not aware that there have been any legal prosecutions in reference 

 to the sale of infected ice in the United Kingdom. It is a curious .superstition and a 

 common error which induces most people to imagine that ice made from dirty water 

 is pure. 



St. Luke said: " Salt is good; but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall 

 it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast 

 it out. He that has ears to hear, let him hear." 



In fish-curing so old was the grievance against the use of dirty and impure salt 

 by the fish-curers that already, by 12th Anne, cap. 2 (1713), it was enacted that all 

 foul salt should be thrown overboard and destroyed to prevent its employment in 

 curing fish. 



From 1866 to 1884 French soldiers and sailors in Algiers suffered from poisoning 

 after eating red-salted cod, due to bacteria, attributed to the foul salt derived from 

 marshes near Copenhagen. At other times to minute low-typed water or algous 

 plants frequenting shallow seashores, and often included in the crystallized sea-salt 

 made by solar evaporation. The bacteria appear to have been the Clathrocystis rosea 

 persicana of (John, Sarcina morrhuw, or Sarcina littoralis, according to different 

 observers. 



In 1878, after eating red-salted codfish, a fatal case occurred at St. Petersburg. 

 Some consider red salted codfish harmless unless associated with the putrefaction of 

 the fish. Salted sturgeon has also proved fatal in Russia. A circular dated Decem- 

 ber 31, 1885, by the French minister of commerce, forbade the sale of red-salted cod- 

 fish, exposing the vendors to the penalties of imprisonment, seizure of their goods, the 

 publication of the judgment by means of placards, and making the dealers responsible 

 for sickness arising from eating red-salted cod. 



