162 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



PUBLIC HEALTH BACTERIOLOGY IN THE 

 LANCASHIRE SEA FISHERIES DISTRICT. 



By Professor W. A. Herdman, D.Sc, F.R.S. 



After twenty years of scientific work on shell-fish and 

 sewage in connection with the Lancashire Sea Fisheries 

 Committee, and just when the promised Government grant 

 will enable that work to be extended and put on a per- 

 manent basis for the future, it seems, now, the appropriate 

 time to summarise what has been done in the past and to 

 state the views and the actions which that work has led 

 up to. 



The Lancashire and Western Sea-Fisheries Committee 

 has jurisdiction over the largest shell-fish producing 

 areas in the British Isles ; and the Scientific Staff of this 

 Fisheries District can claim to have been pioneers in the 

 application of scientific methods of research to these great 

 shell-fish beds, and especially in the investigation of 

 sewage pollution as a possible danger to the public health. 

 The connection between the consumption of polluted shell- 

 fish and epidemics of enteric disease is now too well 

 established to need further demonstration. It is admitted 

 in the Reports of the Local Government Board and of the 

 Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal and in many other 

 authoritative works. The chances of sewage pollution on 

 our populous shores are, and have been for the last few 

 decades, constantly increasing ; and some sea-side 

 localities are certainly, in their present condition, quite 

 unfit for the cultivation or storage of shell-fish intended 

 for human food. On the other hand the magnitude of the 

 shell-fish industries around the British Islands, the 

 number of men and their families engaged directly or 

 indirectly, and the value of these food supplies to the 



