LONGEVITY OF B. TYPHOSUS OUTSIDE OF HUMAN BODY. 185 
Table II. 
Author. 
Date. 
Medium. 
Tempera- 
ture. 
Found. 
Days. 
Dempster 
Karlinski. 
Uffelmann 
Rullmann. 
Martin 
Horrocks. 
1894 
1891 
1894 
1901 
1899 
1900 
1899 
Dry soil « 
Moist soil a 
Sterilized earth 18 
Sterilized garxien earth Room. 
Sterilized white sand 
Sterilized earth and various organic sub- 
stances. 
Sterilized mortar sand 
Sterilized dried earth 
jMoist soil 
3-37 
Dry soil 
Sterilized sewage 
Sterilized sewage+B. coli 
16-22 
9-14 
23-42 
&3 
21 
82 
6&-16 
H2 
618 
456 
(^) 
5 
60 
a Various soils. 
6 Months. 
c Short time. 
Viability in shellfish and sea water . — Wliile the unmistakable 
tracing of many cases of typhoid infection to the eating of shellfish 
has called forth much laborator}^ investigation, very little of the 
reported work can be accepted without doubts, as either the methods 
were manifestly unreliable or there was an unfortunate failure to 
state what procedures were employed. Foote (1895) examined 
oysters and found no bacteria present which could be confused with 
the typhoid bacillus. He consequently assumed that anything iso- 
lated subsequent to inoculation with B. typhosus and corresponding 
culturally must be that organism. Oysters were inoculated between 
their shells by means of a syringe and kept at 50°-65° F., in a heap. 
An organism corresponding culturally to B. typhosus was isolated 
from the shell juice after twenty-eight days, from the stomach after 
eight days but not after twelve days. Sea water taken from an 
oyster bed and kept in liter flasks still contained the organism ten 
days after inoculation, when observation was terminated by the 
breaking of the containers through the freezing of their contents. 
Kept at room temperature in sea water it could be recovered after 
seventeen days, not after twenty-one. Of course the imperfect 
technic impairs the value of these experiments. Wood (1896) 
attacked the question by adding to sterilized sea water such organ- 
isms occurring in sea water as could not be mistaken for the typhoid. 
He then added B. typhosus, and, keeping the water at a temperature 
varying from 4° to 20° C., recovered the bacillus after three months. 
It is interesting as evidencing the lack of influence of the salts of sea 
water upon this organism that it was recoverable from sterilized sea 
water after at least six months. 
