474 SEDGWICK AND WINSLOW. — BACILLUS OP TTPHOID FEVER. 
4 
wliere he cooled his decanters and which received the meltings from his stock of 
ice. The ice supply of the town was considered highly polluted. The additional 
fiicts are cited that the menus of the different classes of officers were the same and 
that certain of the petty officers who did not drink from the " tisane " but made 
use of beer Instead, escaped the disease. 
me 
Altogether it appears probable that the milder intestinal disorders, caused 
■e decomposing organic matter and not by specific germs, have at times been 
caused by polluted ice. The Rye Beach epidemic was carefully and thoroughly 
studied, and leads directly to that conclusion. With respect to typhoid fever the case 
is different. The only ice-epidemic of typhoid fever which has come to our notice, 
VIZ., that at Rennes, rests on a doubtful chain of circumstances, and lacks the con- 
firmation of a complete exclusion of all possible factors other than Ice. We have 
been unable, then, to find any conclusive evidence that typhoid fever has been caused 
by polluted ice-supply. 
w 
A number of English epidemics of typhoid fever, more or less clearly traced to 
Ice-cream, should be noticed here, although the conditions are quite different from 
tliose which obtain in the case of ice. The first of these epidemics occurred in the 
English sanitary districts of Greenwich and Rotherhithe in 1892.<«> During the last 
week of September and the two months next following 511 cases were reported, the 
beginning of the attack In 15 per cent of the cases falling on October 1 and in 57 per 
cent of the cases falling in the fortnight preceding October 3. A remarkably large 
proportion of the victims were young children. The water supply and sewerage of 
the four separate foci of infection were different and apparently all in good condi- 
tion. The milk supply of the households attacked came from seven dairy farms, and 
1 
my cases consisted only of condensed milk. Suspicion was then directed 
ice-cieaiu sold by Italians from barrows in the street. A careful canvass of one 
neighborhood in which 56 cases of typhoid fever had occurred .showed that 924 
persons lived in houses where ices h.ad not been eaten. 232 lived in houses where 
d been obtained from shops, and 395 
ices had been obtained 
from i. ceriam ice-cream vendor. All the eases of typhoid fever were in this latter 
class. A detaded examination of the cases in all the infected areas showed that 
bb9 per cent of the sufferers had eaten ices, and that, of these, 91.4 per cent had 
obtained their supply from ten Italian vendors living in a certain Mill Lane, of whom 
TuJT ! K '•'' "'""' '"«"''«"'=^- The sanitary conditions in Mill Lane were 
f .uml to be abominable ; and in the family of one of 
child 
pHrveyor.s of 
sickened with typhoid fever on July 29 and August 5 respectively 
