266 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
in oysters shipped by my firm during an experience of forty years, and I have 
no doubt that other reputable firms are equally particular. The fact that 99.9 
per cent of the oysters now marketed are taken from deep salt water causes 
them to be incomparably more free from disease germs of all kinds than is true 
of most of our ordinary foods, which come in contact, while exposed for sale, 
with the air and dust of the streets, in which disease germs abound. 
Hundreds of instances could be cited of the amazing multiplication of the 
typhoid-fever germ in drinking water, but one will suffice as an illustration: 
A few years ago there was a single case of typhoid fever in a house that was 
situated on a slope which led, a considerable distance away, to one of the water 
supplies of the city of New Haven. A little drainage proceeding from this house 
ran over the frozen ground of winter to the lake. There the germs multiplied 
to such stupendous extent as to communicate the disease to more than 500 
of those who drank the water in that section of the city, with over 50 deaths. 
The following statement from the Medical Journal gives a recent authority 
(‘Milk and Its Relations to Public Health,’”’ Bulletin No. 41, Hygienic Labora- 
tory, Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service) upon the subject of milk, 
which is so generally and freely used, as follows: 
The conviction that is forced upon the reader of these startling reports by men who 
are writing, not to cause a sensation but to state facts, is that the ‘‘jungle”’ as a dis- 
seminator of disease is as nothing compared withthe dairy. The thought of eating meat 
prepared under the conditions that prevailed at one time in Chicago and that still pre- 
vail in other cities, whence emanated such pharasaical condemnation of the Chicago 
methods, may not be pleasant, but the actual danger to health from this cause is 
almost negligible when we consider the morbidity and the mortality directly traceable 
to milk from the ordinary farm or even from many a so-called model dairy. Dr. 
John W. Trank, of the Marine-Hospital Service, gives in this bulletin a tabulated 
report of 500 epidemics of typhoid fever, scarlet fever, and diphtheria caused by con- 
taminated milk. These epidemics were only a few of those which have been reported 
and are accessible in the literature, and how many there may have been in the past 
which were never reported or the origin of which was never found can only be imagined. 
In addition to this, a report by Doctor Anderson shows the part which infected milk 
plays in the dissemination of tuberculosis. He examined 272 samples of the market 
milk of Washington, supplied by 104 dairies, and found that 6.72 per cent of the samples 
contained virulent tubercle bacilli, and of the dairies there were 11 per cent the milk 
from which contained these micro-organisms. One institution for children was found 
to be feeding its inmates on milk which caused tuberculosis in guinea pigs. Doctor 
Mahler’s investigation led him to the conclusion that probably 25 per cent of the cows 
supplying milk to the District of Columbia are tuberculous. 
Let us compare the preceding with the statement in the bulletin of the 
Chicago Board of Health, dated November 23, 1907, that the bacteriologists of — 
the board of health of the city of Chicago examined samples of all the oysters 
shipped from the various sources to Chicago during the preceding month and 
found all of them absolutely free from any contamination or danger to health. 
