The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-12-15

| tunity to show his superior sagaeity and knowledge of bacteriology by orig mating a sensational and startling the | ory concerning oysters.
 In another case which your commit tee have found time to investigate the following brief statement is sufficient: | New Haven. Dec. 12. 1894.
 The statement having appeared In a newspaper that had suffered from ty- phoid fever caused by eating oysters at Middietown, this is to certify that I have not incurred any Illness by eating | oysters, but, on the contrary, I ate raw oysters while i'll, and attribute my re- covery in part to them. because they were the only food that could relish at that time.
 (signed) JOHN W. LOWE.
 Your committee also find that in other cases which have been attributed in the newspapers to oysters the patients had not only not partaken of any oys- ters during month or two previous to their illness, but are not in the habit of taking raw oysters, ns they are un- palatable to them. We also find that conservative and practical physicians of the city are freely eating raw oys- ters themselves and recommending | them to their patients. We are in po- sition to name many cases in which we | find this to be true.
 We also learn that in the week end ing November 8. 1894, the percentage of deaths from typhoid fever was, In Newton, Mass, 25; In Pittsfeld, Mass, 33.33; in Newburyport, Mass, 25; while In New York 1t was only per cent and in Philadelphia 1 and fraction. Now, 1t should be borne in mind in | connection with these figures that in New York city and in Philadelphia the custom of eating raw oysters is proba- bly, more prevalent than in any Other cities or towns in the United States, | and that 1t Is always done in large cit l ies to vastly greater degree than 1t is in small towns like Newton, Pitts field and Newburyport. We have much better proof in these figures that oys- ters prevent typhoid fever than this inventive genius in Middletown has that | oysters have caused it. We quote from statement in a New Britain paper: For sixteen years the board of health has been inventing plausible theories concerning the causes of typhoid fever epidemics, and every theory they have invented to account for them has, on investigation, been proved to be erroneous.
 "The state has gone on paying for the printing of false Annual Reports, and paying the board for writing these | reports; 1t has even paid money dam ages for injuries to industries caused by the theories and misstatements of this same board"
 It would take too much time to re- view in detail the report of MT. Conn. Your committee will only note that it is a collection of condolences and con- lectures and loose reasoning. If MT. Conn wished to make himself famous for his sagacity and knowledge of bac- ill his very first step should have been to have searched among the oysters in the Quinnipiac river until he could find one single oyster with the bacilli of ty- phoid fever in it.. It is absurd to SUD- pose that if the oysters at New Haven contained typhoid fever bacilh the stu- dents at Wesleyan and their friends should have been the only ones to have incurred typhoid fever by eating them
 Thousands of persons on the same day and following days ate oysters from the Quinnipiac river shipped by the same firm from whom the much-abused Wesleyan oysters were received, with out ill-effects.
 Upon inquiry we find that in many towns where those oysters were ship ped no typhoid fever exists, and that in towns where it does exist the pa tients did not have any. of the oysters shipped by this firm.
 We believe that no person of sound judgment ought to have thus allowed any statement to go out impairing the means of livelihood of hundreds of per sons, until he had at least found ty- phoid fever bacilli in some oysters. We have made careful inquiry of the scientific men whether the typhoid fever bacilli have ever been found in any Fair Haven or New Haven oysters, and none of them claim that they have ever been so found. But the oyster dealers have done just what MT. Conn ought to have done before he ever sought to establish his reputation by starting this fabrication of the imagin- ation. They have caused various samples of oysters to be taken from different places in the Quinnipiac river by the bacteriologlst of the Yale Med ical school, who has examined them with great care and thoroughness, and he has made two reports, one at great length and detail, and the other brief for publication, as follows:
 December ii, 1894 Mr. c. D. Parmelee:
 Dear sir-I have examined your oys- ters which saw taken from your shop and from the Quinnipiac river, and I find no typhoid germs or any other germs of an injurious character in them. Signed,
 CHARLES J. FOOTE. i Demonstrator of Bacteriology in the
 Yale Medical school
 We also have information from of- ficial and scientific authority that the typhoid bacilli can exist on many kinds of food, probably on almost any kind of moist food, and that in many epi- denies the fever has been traced to milk, and in still greater number of a ri d no,,ioc to vxro for H,h nr. bc,