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75
Report of the Medical Officer of Health.
the cases action was taken by the City Authorities and as a result
the sale of polluted shell-fish from certain localities was stopped.
This year 1 have again to report the occurrence of several
cases of Enteric Fever caused by shell-fish, but in these cases the
shell-fish was sent from a remote part of Scotland, and what is
more serious from a public health point of view, from a part
where polluted shell-fish was known to exist, as attention had
been called to the locality by an outbreak of Enteric Fever in
Glasgow in 1903, when the shell-fish were gathered on the same
spot.
In the Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the
County of Argyll for 1903, Dr. McNeill, the Medical Officer of
Health, states that 27 cases of Enteric Fever had been notified
between the 18th and the 24th August, all the patients having
eaten shell-fish gathered on the shore of Loch Gilp, a small loch
in Argyllshire, into which the sewage of the Burgh of Lochgilphead,
the Argyll and Bute Asylum, the Poorhouse, and a number
of private houses is discharged without treatment. Dr. McNeill
states that at low tide the sea recedes about one mile from the
head of the loch, and that the foreshore teems with shell-fish.
Specimens of these shell-fish were taken and examined bacteriologically
and it was found that those collected nearest the
sewer showed the existence of a virulent bacillus of excremental
origin (bacillus coli), and that in those gathered at a distance the
bacillus was absent.
It was also found that the bacillus typhosus, the bacillus of
Typhoid Fever, was present in these surface cockles, and in one
cockle it was obtained almost in pure culture.
Dr. McNeill was of opinion that it was doubtful if the Local
Authority could prohibit the gathering of shell-fish from polluted
areas, but urged on Local Authorities the necessity of preventing
the pollution of the foreshore where shell-fish are gathered with
crude sewage.
Although the number of cases in this Borough caused by
eating shell-fish was few, there is little doubt that they were due
to shell-fish collected in this area.