SEWAGE CONTAMINATIOlsr OF OYSTER BEDS. 197 



the opinion that the oyster " is more frequently liable to the presence 

 of colon-like organisms than other species of common edible shellfish." 



In 1901 Doctor Hill, of the Boston city health department, pub- 

 lished the results of the anal^^sis of clams ol)tained from the Charles 

 River flats, which are exposed to contamination from the Boston sew- 

 age. These clams contained B. eoli, B. cutcritldis s^xjrogenes^ and B. 

 aerogenes capsidatus. 



In addition to the above list of experiments, a large number of refer- 

 ences might be given to scattered outbreaks and sporadic cases of 

 tj'phoid fever and gastro-enteritis which have been attributed to the 

 ingestion of 03'sters and other shellfish. In most of these cases, how- 

 ever, no bacteriological examination of the material under suspicion 

 was made, and therefore all evidence is purely circumstantial. For 

 a comprehensive review of this literature the reader is referred to the 

 article by Doctor Harrington, '' Some reported cases of typhoid attrib- 

 uted to oysters," published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Jour- 

 nal, Vol. CXLIV, No. 19; to the exhaustive treatise of Doctor 

 Mosnj', "Maladies provoquees par Tingestion des mollusques," in the 

 Revue d'Hygiene, December, 1889, and January, February, and 

 March, 1900; and to an article by Doctor Newsholme, pu])]ished in 

 the British Medical Journal of August 8, 1903. 



Little success has attended the efl'orts to isolate the typhoid bacillus 

 from contaminated oysters. Doctor Klein found it in but one of a 

 large number of specimens examined. It was also reported in cer- 

 tain oysters from Constantinople. Man}^ experiments have been 

 made, however, to determine the conduct of B. typJu>sus in oysters 

 experimentally inoculated with pure culture, and also to determine 

 the length of time that the typhoid organism and the vibrio of 

 cholera can live in sea water and in oysters and other shellfish. 

 Indeed, much more attention has been given to this phase of the 

 problem than to the bacteriology of normal 03'sters. 



Whatever experiments have Ijeen made on normal oysters indicate 

 that the bacterial content is variable, depending more or less on the 

 locality from which the specimens are obtained. Nearly all observers 

 agree that " normal " oysters — that is, oysters living in pure sea 

 water — do not contain B. coll or other sewage forms "in their bodies 

 or in the liquor within their shells," and that the bacteria occurring 

 in these specimens are species commonly found in water. There is 

 little doubt but that the germ content of the surrounding water deter- 

 mines, to a great extent, the germ content of oysters and other shell- 

 fish living in it. If B. coll and other sewage bacteria are present in 

 appreciable numbers in the water we will in all probability find some 

 trace of them in the shellfish. Doctor Houston, however, is of the 

 opinion that B. coll is present in many shellfish from a presumably 

 unpolluted source. In regard to the question as to whether the pres- 



