View report page

20
One death occurred from Puerperal Fever, and one case
only of this disease was notified during the year.
Oyster Culture in relation to Disease.
In the supplement of the report of the Medical Officer of
the Local Government Board for 1894-95, Dr. Thorne Thome
gives an interesting report on the above important subject.
He has shown in conjunction with Drs. Bulstrode and Klein,
that while it is true that some of the places around our coast
where oysters are cultivated, stored, fattened and rendered fit
for market, are free from the risk of sewage pollution, other
places where they are cultivated are decidedly dangerous.
In the report is also included the copy of a report by
Professor Cohn, on an outbreak of Typhoid Fever at a
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
Professor Cohn states, " if one had planned beforehand a
series of experiments designed to prove the possibility of
oysters as distributing Typhoid it would hardly have been
possible to have devised a more satisfactory series of conditions
than those which have attained in this outbreak at Middletown."
After considering the possibility of infection from water,
milk, ice, ice-cream, and other sources, such as defective
plumbing, no cause could be found ; but it was found that all
the cases of Typhoid occurred between October 20th and
November 9th (the period of incubation for Typhoid being from
about eight to twenty-eight days), between which periods a
series of fraternity suppers, commencing October 12th, were
given, in which raw oysters were freely partaken of. It was
also found that the ladies in the College, about 50 in number,
did not hold any special supper on the evening of October 12th,
nor did they eat raw oysters either then or subsequently, and
they were all exempt from the disease.
All the oysters eaten came from a place called Fair Haven,
and it was shown that water in which the oysters had been
fattened before they were sent to the consumer was polluted
with sewage, and from one sewer which was emptying itself
into the water were typhoid stools coming from a neighbouring
house where a lady and her daughter were suffering from
Typhoid Fever; the lady dying and the daughter recovering.
Subsequent examination showed that the two persons in
question were taken sick at just about the time that the oysters
sent to Middletown were collected.
The oysters were sent to Middletown on October 10th and
the doctor was first called to these Typhoid cases on October
11th.