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24
OUTBREAK OF ILLNESS CAUSED BY USE OF
VERMIN-DESTROYING VIRUS.
In July last an outbreak of illness occurred at a large business establishment
where a considerable number of persons of both sexes are employed.
Between the 18th and 22nd of that month twelve men became seriously ill,
the symptoms being severe headache, vomiting, diarrhoea, cramp in the
abdomen, giddiness, with severe collapse in many cases. These were
accompanied with fever, with high temperature, and the patients looked, and
were, extremely ill. The severe symptoms lasted about forty.eight hours, but
each case recovered and was practically convalescent at the end of the week.
The distinguishing features of the illness indicating infection by some
bacteriological poison, portions of the stools of three of the patients were sent
to Dr. Klein for examination, who found a bacillus predominating in each
specimen, which he regarded as unquestionably the cause of the illness.
Enquiries into the supply of food showed that the whole of the staff, mals
and female, were supplied with similar food, cooked and prepared in a
common kitchen.
There was one noticeable fact, viz.: all the patients had dined in the same
room, and no person that dined in either of the four other dining rooms was
attacked.
In the course of the investigation an offensive smell was noticed in the
dining room used by the patients, and on the removal of some of the floor
boards the dead bodies, more or less decomposed, of a large number of mice
were found.
It was then ascertained that a much-advertised virus for the destruction of
rodents had been used in this room and in the pantry adjoining. The virus
had been laid about on pieces of bread, and it is easy to conceive that mice
eating the poison might carry the contagion about on their feet to the floors,
shelves, chairs, tables and plates, and thus it could infect human beings
dining in this room.
The virus used was stated in the advertisement to cause a fatal contagious
disease amongst rodents, but to be harmless to domestic animals and
human beings.
A tube of this material—the "Liverpool" Virus for Mice, Field Mice, &c.,
was purchased and submitted to Dr. Klein, who made an exhaustive series of
experiments, which proved conclusively that the organisms found in the stools
of the patients was identical with the organisms of the virus.