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58
water has been laid 011 from the town main to each boiling
shed, so that there is no need to use the water of the creek
to wash the cockles after cooking. The process to which the
cockles are submitted can scarcely be called "boiling" them.
It consists rather of dipping a cage containing the cockles into a
copper of boiling water, the process taking only 1 or 1^ minutes,
the object being to kill the "fish "and enable it to be separated
from the shell. A more prolonged boiling would harden the cockle
and render it unsaleable. Probably the dipping into boiling water
is sufficient to wash off auy organism or sewage which may be
within the shell or on the surface of the " fish," but it cannot be
relied upon to kill the organism if it be inside, as in those examined
by the Jenner Institute. Klein states that the typhoid bacillus
never survives exposure of five minutes to a temperature of (30° C.,
and it is doubtful if dipping into boiling water is sufficient to raise
the interior of the mollusc even to that temperature.
There is 110 doubt as to the possibility of sewage obtaining
access to the cockles as they lie on the side of the creek, and this
appeal's to be the time when contamination occurs, for the sands
from which the cockles are gathered are free from pollution. There
should be no difficulty in arranging for some better method of
keeping the cockles until they are wanted than laying them on
the banks of this sewage-polluted creek, and thereby render free
from danger a food which is largely used by certain classes of the
community.
Besides the typhoid bacillus the Jenner Institute found the
coli bacillus, an organism intimately associated with sewage.
These sewage organisms produce the gastric and intestinal
symptoms which appear soon after eating polluted food, so that
in typhoid cases, where there is a history of such disturbance
followed by a temporary recovery, food is suggested as the
vehicle by which the poison was conveyed into the body. Of
course, if the typhoid bacillus is absent the digestive trouble
passes off, and there is no subsequent attack of typhoid fever;
but sometimes^ typhoid-like symptoms may result from the
absorption into the system of poisons (toxins) produced by these
sewage organisms.
Bacteriological Diagnosis.—Examination was made of 10 samples
of blood from suspected cases of typhoid fever: in five the Widal
reaction was well marked, and in one it was feeble; in four the
reaction was not obtained.
Deaths.—20 deaths occurred, equal to a case mortality of 19-6
per cent., the London rate being 15'5 per cent.