810 
FOWL-CROUP AND TYPHOID FEVER. 
steamer. The case is this, then—annually, say, a thousand 
donkeys are disposed of within the metropolitan area by the 
only class that can possibly find a use for them. What 
becomes of them ?—The Globe. 
FOWL-CROUP AND TYPHOID FEVER. 
The circumstances attending the death of John Phillips 
recently formed the subject of an official inquiry at Brentford, 
and deserve a brief notice in these columns. According to 
the report furnished to us, it appears that the landlord of the 
Railway Tavern, Acton, finding that one of his fowls was 
suffering from “ croup , v ordered it to be killed and buried ; 
these instructions were, however, not carried out, but one of 
the tavern servants gave the fowl to Phillips, who took it 
home and had it cooked for dinner. Phillips, who w 7 as a 
labourer, aged sixty-five, and his w 7 ife and daughters and five 
other persons partook of the fowl, and all suffered from the 
effects within a short period, the symptoms being diarrhoea, 
vomiting, and pain in the head. All recovered except the 
deceased, the subject of inquiry. The finding of the jury 
was that the cause of death w r as typhoid fever, brought on by 
eating a portion of a diseased fowl. It is hardly necessary 
for us to remark on the unwisdom of the jury in this case, in 
attempting to give a name to the disease which caused 
death, as, if the deceased succumbed owdng to the unwhole¬ 
some food he had received into his stomach but a few hours 
before, he certainly did not die of typhoid fever. The 
obvious lesson the public should learn from the fatality is, 
that it is neither safe nor economical to eat the flesh of birds 
or beasts which have been killed on account of acute disease. 
To medical officers of health and pathologists the question 
will probably occur—what w T as this “ croup ” that proved so 
deadly ? and the answer is not easy to arrive at. Indeed 
“ croup, ;; as applied to poultry, appears to be quite a 
common term, and one used to express a symptom rather 
than a specific disease—that is to say, almost any fowl dis¬ 
ease in wffiich the subject affected gives utterance to a harsh 
guttural cry at short intervals is likely to pass for croup. 
Perhaps one of the most common of these is an aphthous 
affection of the mouth and throat, but this is generally 
regarded as mild and tractable. Then there is the singularly 
fatal malady known as fowl-cholera, in which the mouth and 
windpipe are often found clogged with a viscid mucus, ren¬ 
dering respiration difficult and croupy. It is probable, also, 
that in some cases of anthrax the breathing may become 
