In order to examine oysters bacteriologically, it is necessary to pay particular attention to the water in the pallial cavity, the contents of the alimentary canal, and the washings of the shell itself. Ordinary media may be used for obtaining a growth of the contained organisms.
Other shell-fish than oysters do, from time to time, cause epidemics or individual cases of gastro-intestinal irritation, and probably contain various germs. These they acquire in all probability from their food, which by their own choice is frequently of a doubtful character.
Meat. Parasites are occasionally found in meat, but bacteria are comparatively rare. Not that they do not occur in the bodies of animals used for human consumption, for in the glands, mesenteries, and other organs they are common. But in those portions of the carcass which are used by man, namely the muscles, bacteria are rare. The reasons alleged for this are the acid reaction (sarcolactic acid) and the more or less constant movement during life. A bacterial disease which, perhaps more than any other, might be expected to be conveyed by meat is tubercle. Yet the recent Royal Commission on Tuberculosis has again emphasised the absence of bacilli in the meat substance:
"In tissues which go to form the butcher's joint, the material of tubercle is not often found even where the organs (lungs, liver, spleen, membranes, etc.) exhibit very advanced or generalised tuberculosis; indeed, in muscle and muscle juice it is very seldom that tubercle bacilli are to be met with; perhaps they are somewhat more often to be discovered in bone, or in some small lymphatic gland embedded in intermuscular fat."[74]
The only way in which such meat substance becomes infected with tubercle appears to be through carelessness in the butcher, who perchance smears the meat substance with a knife that has been used in cutting the organs, and so has become contaminated with infected material. Very instructive also are the results at which Dr. Sims Woodhead arrived in compiling evidence for the same Commission on the effect of cooking upon tuberculous meat:
"Ordinary cooking, such as boiling and more especially roasting, though quite sufficient to sterilise the surface, and even the substance for a short distance from the surface of a joint, cannot be relied upon to sterilise tubercular material included in the centre of rolls of meat, especially when these are more than three pounds or four pounds weight. The least reliable method of cooking for this purpose is roasting before a fire; next comes roasting in an oven, and then boiling."[75]
From this statement it will be understood that rolled meat may be a source of infection to a greater degree than the ordinary joint.
Notwithstanding this negative evidence, more than twenty species of bacteria have been isolated from canned meats and hams, and a considerable number of poisoning cases have occurred from meat contaminated with bacteria or their products. The general symptoms of such meat poisoning are vomiting, diarrhœa, fever, and more or less prostration. Ballard and Klein isolated a specific microbe from samples of bacon which appear to have caused an epidemic of infectious pneumonia at Middlesborough. In 1880 occurred the well-known "Welbeck disease" epidemic. A public luncheon was followed by severe and even fatal illness. Seventy-two persons were affected, and four died. A specific bacillus was isolated by Klein. In 1881 much the same thing happened at Nottingham, in which fifteen persons were attacked, and one died. The same bacillus was isolated from the pernicious pork. Again in 1889 an outbreak of diarrhœa at Carlisle was traced to bacterially diseased pork. But taking these and similar cases at their worst, there can be no doubt that under no circumstances is meat as infective as milk.
Ice-cream. In 1894 Dr. Klein had occasion to bacteriologically examine ice-creams sold in the streets of London. In all six samples were analysed, and in each sample the conclusions resulting were of a nature sufficiently serious to support the view that the bacterial flora was not inferior to ordinary sewage. The water in which the ice-cream glasses were washed was also examined, and found to contain large numbers of bacteria.