FOUL FISH AND FILTH FEVERS. 319 



TREATMENT OF BITES AND WOUNDS CAUSED BY HANDLING LIVING OR DEAD 



FISH, ETC. 



(1) Ammonia, as sal -volatile, smelling-salts, etc., or other available alkali should 

 be immediately placed on the bite, sting, or wound. 



(2) Subsequently a little Oondy's fluid (permanganate of potash) should be poured 

 on the wound, so that in case of the animal inoculating any putrid matter into the 

 patient, such poisonous material shall be at once disinfected and destroyed. 



(3) The immediate pain and itching from bites of animals seem due to something 

 more than the mere acidity of a secretion. The pain and itching depend, probably, 

 rather upon the introduction of some specific irritant, possibly distinct and peculiar 

 to almost every large class of insect and other animal. 



(4) Where practicable, especially owing to possible putrefactive properties, the 

 sting, etc., should be extracted as soon as possible. 



(5) The same method of treatment is equally applicable to bites from domestic 

 animals, the stings of serpents, and to various injuries caused by amphibian and 

 aquatic animals, to which fishermen and sportsmen are liable. 



FOULED FISH AND FISHY FILTH. 



Offensive fish markets and fish shops, stationary or perambulating costermongers, 

 evidently come under the section of offensive trades, exposing the delinquent to a first 

 penalty of a sum not exceeding £2, and subsequent convictions may, even for a single 

 often se, amount to £200. 



The public health ships act (48 and 49 Victoria, 1885) confirms section 110 of the 

 1875 public health act, extending the powers so as to bring ships within the jurisdic- 

 tion of the local authority in which the ship is lying. This would evidently include 

 all fish-carrying vessels under the jurisdiction of the public-health acts of England. 



By the 1800 public-health ameudment act and the 1891 London public-health act 

 any solid or liquid article or animal intended for the food of man, exposed for sale or 

 deposited in any place for the purpose of sale, or in preparation for sale, may be seized 

 and, if found diseased, unsound, unwholesome, or unfit for the food of man, the medical 

 officer of health, the inspector of nuisances, or their representatives, may seize, con- 

 demn, and destroy the said article or animal. For every such improper article exposed 

 or prepared for sale, etc., the would-be vender or food-preparer seems liable to a fine 

 of £50, or else a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months with or without hard 

 labor. 



Fishing ports or districts and fish shops, stores, and markets are proverbial for 

 their now avoidable abominable smells and worse sanitary arrangements. 



Though from their earliest history the Norwegians, immediately on capture, have 

 always bled their fish by incisions just under and behind the gills, yet British fisher- 

 men have never generally adopted this practice, which, combined with gutting on 

 capture and improved methods of curing, secured to the Dutch the practical monopoly 

 of the fish trade of the world, between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. 



In the United Kingdom its fish venders consider it necessary to sell their fish 

 looking full, fat, and round within, and wet without. Hence till the fish is bought it 

 is usually unbled and ungutted, whilst to make its skin and surface look bright and 



