Isolation of <i>Bact. typhosum</i> by means of bismuth sulphite medium in water- and milk-borne epidemics

Abstract

1. An account is given of enteric fever in a Mental Hospital, and the discovery of a “precocious carrier” of the Bact. typhosum , a man who, 4½ months before he showed symptoms of the disease, was a “carrier” and probably the source of infection in a milk-borne outbreak. 2. Description of a strain of Bact. typhosum forming dwarf colonies which was isolated ( a ) from a river, ( b ) from a patient who had drunk the water, ( c ) from the sewage of a mental hospital discharged into the river 4½ miles higher up, and ( d ) from patients in the mental hospital. 3. Isolation of the Bact. typhosum from a well of an institution in which an outbreak of enteric fever had occurred. 4. Isolation of Bact. typhosum from a stream adjoining a well in a farmyard in Belfast at a time when the milk was the source of infection of over 100 cases of the disease. 5. Isolation of Bact. typhosum from a cesspool discharging into a stream near Bournemouth, and the suggestion that Mrs A. from whose premises milk was obtained, which was the infective vehicle in the Bournemouth-Poole epidemic, may have been a “precocious carrier”. 6. An account of methods employed in the bacteriological examination of water and sewage.