View report page

49
its water from three reservoirs, which serve an extensive area,
and the supplies from these reservoirs are interchangeable.
Laboratory examinations of water samples taken by officials of
the Metropolitan Water Board revealed nothing abnormal, and
samples subsequently taken by the Sanitary Inspector were also
found satisfactory. Most of the samples were taken from houses
in which cases of Typhoid Fever occurred.
Milk was definitely excluded, also water-cress, fried-fish,
ice cream and shell-fish.
One outstanding feature of the outbreak, as shown by the
spot map, was its limitation to practically one-and-a-half to
two square miles, suggesting some local infection.
An exhaustive enquiry was made into the various foodstuSs
consumed by each patient, and the sources of supply, the
patient's partiality to or recently acquired taste for any particular
article of diet being carefully noted.
It will be appreciated that such an investigation is difficult,
the information of necessity being obtained, in the majority of
cases, from the patient's relatives. Further, the scope of the
inquiry, embracing all articles of food eaten any time from a
fortnight to three weeks prior to the onset of the illness, imposes
a very considerable tax on the memory of the person supplying
the information; but as the cases accumulated and our investigations
proceeded, it became evident that the name of a certain
food shop, situated in the centre of the area affected and which
we shall call " X," was recurring with remarkable frequency in
our records of food consumed by the people affected. This shop,
which is excellently conducted, had a great many customers in
the district, but it is to be remembered not much more than
about 12% of those exposed to infection develop the disease.
Further investigations cast suspicion on certain articles of
food which, because of their nature, were eaten without preliminary
cooking in the home.