THE WHOLESOMENESS OF OYSTERS AS FOOD. 265 
Then, too, there is an incentive to sensational reports about oysters, 
because the claim that they cause disease is a novelty. Milk has been found 
to be the cause of typhoid fever in so many thousands of cases that such 
reports no longer secure so much attention in sensational journalism as does 
one alleged or suspected case that is attributed to oysters. 
I would not be understood to say anything against the general and almost 
universal use of milk as a food. The most that we would claim is that care 
should be taken to keep milk free from contamination, but there is not one- 
thousandth part as much evidence to cause us to fear the contamination of 
oysters with disease germs as there is of milk; in fact, recently a great 
variety of foods have been declared dangerous to health. According to ‘The 
Jungle’ and the investigations resulting, the methods under which meat was 
prepared for the market were revolting. Milk has been found to be swarming 
with the bacilli of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and diphtheria. Flies have been 
proved to carry the germs of typhoid fever and other diseases, and deposit 
them upon every kind of food upon which they alight. Analysis has disclosed 
harmful adulterations in many of the prepared foods and drinks. Public and 
private supplies of drinking water have in many instances caused devastating 
epidemics of typhoid fever, and the bacilli have been found in vast quantities 
not only in the water but in milk which had come in contact with cans washed 
in the water. 
Among these many dangers from food and drink, it becomes necessary to 
discriminate between those foods which are known to be dangerous to health 
and those to which mere suspicion is attached. We must eat and drink; there- 
fore we need to know in what foods disease germs have actually been found, 
and, on the other hand, those to which unproved suspicion has attached. 
To those who have read the sensational statements against oysters, it will 
be a surprise to know that although many expert bacteriologists have searched 
diligently for typhoid bacilli in oysters, I have not been able to learn of one 
single authenticated case in which bacilli have been found in oysters in the 
United States, except when placed there for purpose of experiment; while 
the germs have been found in milk and water in innumerable instances and 
are known to multiply in these media to an extent beyond arithmetical expres- 
sion and beyond the comprehension of human intelligence. 
Another assertion that has been recklessly made about oysters concerns 
the use of preservatives. When oysters are handled as they are under modern 
methods—caught by steamers on one day, opened the next and, after being 
thoroughly chilled with ice, shipped into the country, there is not the slightest 
need or occasion for the use of chemical preservatives. I can say without hesi- 
tation that not an ounce of any preservative excepting ice has ever been used 
