Excerpt from Experiments and Observations on the Vitality of the Bacillus of Typhoid Fever and of Sewage Microbes in Oysters and Other Shellfish: Investigations on Behalf of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, London

Lecturer on Advanced Bacteriology in. The Medical School of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London.

Already in 1893 the then Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, Sir Richard Thorne, in his Summary (reports and Papers on Cholera in England in 1893, Local Government Board) makes the following trenchant remarks on page 29, in reference to a number of cholera attacks in Which the history pointed to infection by means of oysters and shellfish which had been procured from and specifically fouled at Cleethorpes and Grimsby, m'z. But one thing is certain, oysters and shellfish, both at the mouth of the Humber and at other points along the English coastline, are at times so grown and stored that they must of necessity be periodically bathed in sewage more or less dilute; oysters have more than once appeared to serve as the medium for communicating disease, such as enteric fever, to man; and so long as conditions exist such as those with which the oyster trade of Cleethorpes and Grimsby is shown to be associated, conditions which may at any time involve risk of the fouling of such shellfish with the excreta of persons suffering from diseases of the type of cholera and enteric fever, so long will it be impossible to assert that their use as an article of diet is not concerned in the production of disease of the class in question.

In the subsequent two or three years several outbreaks of typhoid or enteric fever having been demonstrated to be caused by the consumption of oysters derived from sewage polluted layings in America, in France, and in England (see Report of the m.o., Oyster Culture and Disease, 1894 1895, Appendix 3 and the Local Government Board had instituted in 1894 - 1895 a careful survey of all oyster beds and oyster ponds along the whole coast of England and Wales; the results of those investigations were published in 1896 by the Medical Department of the Board as a separate volume Oyster Culture and Disease and it will be seen therein to what a large extent oysters are laid down and stored in several places in England in a manner which must be considered not only objectionable grad cleanliness per se, but also must be instrumental in conveying occasionally dangerous infection to those consuming them.

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