170 Our Food Mollusks 



It may not be pleasant to contemplate these facts, but 

 that there is here a real menace to health is not any 

 longer to be questioned, and the more generally it is un- 

 derstood the better. Between twenty-five and thirty 

 millions of bushels of oysters alone are annually sent to 

 market from our shore beds, and it may seem strange 

 that, under the conditions, any considerable number of 

 the inhabitants of this country escape some terrible dis- 

 ease contracted from eating shell-fish. While typhoid 

 fever, often very difficult to diagnose, is more prevalent 

 than is generally realized, there is no necessity for alarm 

 but only for caution in this case. The reason that there 

 is not more danger from bivalves is that, while they are 

 wonderfully efficient mechanisms for straining danger- 

 ous organisms out of the water, such organisms prob- 

 ably do not accumulate in living masses by multiplication 

 in their bodies, but are perhaps soon destroyed by the 

 digestive fluids. Only those that happen to be on the 

 gills or other surfaces of the body at the time of market- 

 ing are dangerous. Again, long neck clams, quahaugs, 

 scallops, and even oysters, are usually cooked before being 

 eaten, and any dangerous organisms that they may bear 

 are thus killed. A healthy human body, also, is able 

 to withstand many an invasion of them without danger 

 if they are not too numerous. 



But caution certainly is necessary, and it is well to 

 know something of the source of this food when pos- 

 sible. There is slight danger from little necks or other 

 clams not taken in the mouths of harbors or rivers bear- 

 ing sewage. The same is undoubtedly true of oysters 

 taken from the majority of beds along our coast. But 

 the trouble lies in the fact that before food mollusks are 

 marketed they are almost invariably placed for a few 



