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8
which I have been speaking have a local origin; if they take
their birth from a contact locally effected between food
stuffs and germ-bearing sewage, they must before now have
declared their common parentage by the co-existence of
circumstances of time and place, and their relationship by
the discovery of those connected facts which link together
associated cases of infective disease. Upon no conceivable
hypothesis can it be argued that these sporadic cases of
Typhoid fever are of local origin.
Now, if it be assumed, on the other hand, that the infective
particles were imported from without the parish, as food
and drink are the only possible media of infection, the
bacillus must have been introduced in connection with one
or other of these articles. If milk and water be excluded on
account of the reasons already stated, and things cooked
and boiled likewise removed from the list of food stuffs,
which, presumably, may become the carriers of infective
particles, the category of articles in connection with which
the Typhoid bacillus could and must have come is reduced
to small dimensions. Shell-fish and vegetables eaten in
their raw state appear to stand alone as fulfilling the essential
conditions. Since my Report on this subject reached
the Vestry in November, 1894, the opinion which I then
expressed, and to which I was driven by the logic of factsnamely,
that the sporadic cases of Typhoid occurring in the
parish were caused by the consumption of shell-fish and
vegetables eaten raw—many facts have come to light which
amply confirm these views. In a large number of cases,
when the history of the patient can be clearly ascertained,
it is to be observed as a notable coincidence that oysters,
mussels, or water-cress, in their raw state had been eaten
at some time during the twenty-one days antecedent to the
date of the onset of symptoms. When this matter in regard