The Atlantic Seaboard


our medical schools, those of twenty-eight named institutions, including
most of the stronger schools, responded. To the first question, "Is
the
theory that most, if not all, infectious diseases are caused by the growth
of microscopic organisms, accepted by the members of your faculty
and the physicians in your vicinity," most of the responses were in
the
affirmative. Seven, however, replied, "No," "Not wholly,"
"It may
be true, but it may not," or with other equivocal answers. Question
5,
"To what extent does the subject receive attention in the medical course
of the school with which you are connected," brought a wide variety
of
answers ranging from "Incidentally only," "More than deserved,"
to
"A well-equipped bacteriological laboratory with a special instructor."
Most institutions gave bacteriology only slight attention; it being com-
monly interwoven with other courses. Conn's conclusions run: "It may
be said that our medical schools and profession generally have been and
are advancing along this line of bacteriology as fast as can be ex-
pected .... The indications are: that a few years will see bacteriology
established as a subject to be taught, either as a branch of pathology or
otherwise, in all of the medical schools whose financial condition will
warrant it."'2
   Conn's interest in public water supplies was aroused by an outbreak
 of typhoid fever in 1894, at Wesleyan, beginning eight days after
 initiation banquets and continuing for about two weeks with a total of
 25 cases from three fraternities of which 13 were severe and 4 fatal.
 Oysters served raw on the half shell were the only common article of
 diet among the cases. Conn's further detective work showed that the
 oysters had been placed for a few days on less saline "fattening beds"
 in the Quinnipiac River, a short distance from a private sewer draining
 a house where there were two cases of typhoid fever. The same lot of
 oysters had provided uncooked zest the same evening at a fraternity
 banquet at Amherst; here six cases of typhoid fever occurred among
 those who had eaten the raw oysters. The chain of evidence was com-
 plete.3 Subsequently a number of such outbreaks have been traced be-
 yond any reasonable doubt to contaminated oysters eaten raw. This
 was, I believe, the first epidemiological demonstration of pollution of
 oyster beds and stimulated much study of this involved problem, espe-
 cially by Gage and his associates at the Lawrence Experiment Station,
 Gorham, Fuller, et al. in Narragansett Bay and Brown University, and
 later by Howard, et al. in Chesapeake Bay. Control of the situation
rested entirely with the several states until Congress passed laws in


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