THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 79 



I noticed that alongside those oysters on the plate that was passed to me 

 there was a piece of a lemon. What do you suppose that lemon was for? 

 It was to disinfect the oysters. (Laughter). And that is exactly what 

 it will do. Lemon juice will kill not only oyster germs, but typhoid fever 

 germs. Oyster germs are typhoid fever germs. That is why people get 

 typhoid fever sometimes by eating raw oysters. If you are fond of typhoid 

 fever germs, oysters on the half shell will be a good way to get them. The 

 oyster lives largely on typhoid fever germs. He likes them. You can 

 almost always find typhoid fever germs in oyster stomachs. 



Secretary C. E. Bassett : Two died in Allegan county last week from eating 

 oysters, and they had all the symptoms of typhoid fever; and when I 

 left home there were four more not out of danger; these had every symptom 

 of typhoid fever from the report given to me. From eating oysters at a 

 Masonic banquet held at Dorr. 



Dr. Kellogg continued: One of the most eminent surgeons of Chicago 

 a few years ago died from eating oysters. He ate some oysters, and the 

 germs that were in the oysters set up such a frightful inflammation in his 

 bowels that they had to operate upon him a couple of days later, and he 

 died; the operation could not save his life. 



A few years ago a man came into the sanitarium about 3 o'clock in the 

 morning, a workman in the city here, and he was suffering frightfully. He 

 was vomiting and purging, and was in terrible distress, pale as death, and 

 he thought he was going to die. He was all tied up in knots, and he was in 

 a frightful state. What had he been doing? "I was down to the restaurant 

 last night. I don't know anything unless it was that ; and I called for oysters, 

 and they were so good, and I had two plates of them, and I don't know, 

 but I guess it must have been that." He suspected the oysters only because 

 he had heard oysters sometimes made that sort of mischief. I said to him, 

 after he recovered, a couple of days later, "Go back to that restaurant and 

 tell them those oysters were so good you want some more just like them." 

 I knew if he told them they made him sick he could not get them. He did 

 so, and brought them to me. I took a little of the juice of the oyster and 

 injected it into a cat with a hypodermic syringe, and that cat was dead in 

 a very short time; died with the same symptoms he had. I took just a little 

 of that juice and put in a two quart can of milk and put it away, and three 

 months afterwards I took some milk out of that can, some of the serum, 

 the whey, and injected it into a cat, and the cat died promptly. The very 

 same thing. This was tyrotoxicon. This oyster juice contained the poison, 

 which is the same as the tyrotoxicon of poison cheese. You can produce 

 it any time by putting some oysters such as you frequently get, into milk 

 and putting it away for a few months; you will get the same thing. The 

 oyster always has this dangerous germ about it. 



I call your attention to the fact that lemon juice is always served with 

 raw oysters. The lemon juice is to disinfect the oysters. Two drops of 

 lemon juice will disinfect two dozen oysters. There is a disinfecting power 

 in lemon juice, and also in apple juice and grape juice; fruit acids of all sorts 

 are antiseptics. That is one great value of fruits ; they are a natural antiseptic. 

 Fever germs cannot live in lemon juice; cholera germs cannot live in it; 

 no sort of germs can live in lemon juice; and the juice of the sour apple 

 will kill any sort of germs. So it is a valuable thing to knoAv that the juices 

 of fruits are a means of disinfecting, and a perfectly harmless means, while 

 corrosive sublimate and formaldehyde are poisons. Fruit juices are poison 

 to germs, and at the same time are actual food to us. 



