254 BACTERIA IN OTHER FOODS 



W. Conn, who found that the only channel of infection was the 

 consumption of oysters served at certain college suppers. These 

 oysters had been obtained from dealers at Middletown, and had been 

 cultivated on oyster-beds in the region of a sewage outfall. The 

 facts briefly were these : Two cases of typhoid fever occurred in a 

 house discharging into a certain sewer ; the outfall of the sewer was 

 in immediate proximity to an oyster-bed, from which oysters were 

 taken for consumption at the college suppers ; 23 cases of typhoid 

 fever followed among the students who attended the suppers at 

 which the oysters were eaten, but these cases were limited to three 

 out of seven fraternities; the only article of food used by the 

 three implicated fraternities, and not by the other four, was raw 

 oysters from the polluted consignment; and lastly, some of 

 the same consignment were consumed at Amherst College, and an 

 outbreak of typhoid fever occurred among those who consumed 

 them.* 



This outbreak furnished evidence almost equal to a series of 

 experiments designed with the object of proving the possibility of 

 the transmission of typhoid fever by oysters. It served also to 

 stimulate inquiry, and since its occurrence a number of outbreaks 

 have been traced to a similar source. Sir William Broadbent 

 described several such cases in 1895, and Dr Newsholme continued 

 to follow the matter up, and reported that in 1894 38'2 per cent., 

 in 1895, 33-9 per cent., in 1896, 31'8 per cent., and in 1897, 307 per 

 cent., of the total cases of typhoid fever originating in Brighton 

 were caused by sewage-contaminated shell-fish. Between midsummer 



1893 and the end of 1902, 630 cases of enteric fever occurred at 

 Brighton, of which Dr Newsholme states 226 or 36 per cent, were 

 caused by sewage-polluted shell-fish, 152 cases being traced to 

 oysters and the remainder to other kinds of shell-fish.-j- In 1896 Dr 

 Bruce Law reported an outbreak of typhoid fever at Southend, in 

 which certain cases had apparently been due to the same vehicle 

 of infection. In the same year Chantemesse described to the 

 Academy of Medicine an outbreak at Saint-Andre, in the Medi- 

 terranean Department of Herault, which was caused by a barrel 

 of oysters derived from contaminated oyster - beds at Cette. 

 Fourteen persons eating these oysters in an uncooked condition 

 contracted typhoid fever, or a disease simulating it. Evidence of 

 the same character as that recorded in the above cases was forth- 

 coming from Brightlingsea (Buchanan), Chichester (Theodore Thom- 

 son), Belfast (Jaffe), Southend-on-Sea (Foulerton, Nash), Yarmouth, 



* Seventeenth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Connecticut, U.S.A., 



1894 ; New York Medical Record, 1894 ; Report of Medical Officer to Local Govern- 

 ment Board, 1894-95. 



t Report on Health of Brighton, 1902, p. 45. 



