45 



would and do accrue from the sale of oysters which would 

 rightly be considered as perfectly safe. 



Not that I would recommend any relaxation in insisting 

 that oyster beds should be as far removed as possible from 

 sewage and other pollution ; but in those instances in which 

 oyster layings are unfortunately for one reason or another un- 

 controlled and established in localities accessible to pollution 

 or actually polluted, the remedy for rendering these oysters 

 clean and safe seems to me simple and well worth trying, 

 in the interest of the owners whose property at present is 

 greatly depreciated, unless surreptitiously made active, and 

 above all in the interest of the public, who in the majority 

 of instances have to rely on the mere statement of interested 

 parties to the effect that particular oysters are supposed to 

 be derived from clean beds. 



SERIES B. 



EXPERIMENTS WITH THE B. TYPHOSUS IN COCKLES AND 



MUSSELS. 



Infection with typhoid fever through cockles or mussels 

 is, in the nature of things, of less extensive occurrence than 

 through oysters, since cockles and mussels are incomparably 

 less frequently eaten in a raw state than oysters. Although 

 the methods generally employed of preparing either cockles or 

 mussels for consumption are open to criticism in respect of de- 

 stroying by those methods the infective agent, if present, the 

 general method is nevertheless capable in some degree of 

 achieving this. As is well known, both cockles and mussels 

 are in bulk subjected to a process that is designated as 

 " cooking," consisting in either plunging a mass of these shell- 

 fish in boiling water, and taking them out as soon as the 

 water again commences to bubble, generally sooner, or in 

 heating the water till it commences to bubble. By either 

 process the end in view is to expose the shellfish to heat for a 

 sufficient time till their shell opens, so as to separate the fish 

 from the shell by simple agitation ; the fish, although 



