There are four reasons for objecting to the process of "floating" oysters. The first--the danger of conveying a deadly disease--has been sufficiently dwelt on. Let us now consider the second:
Were all oysters taken from the ocean and not near the mouths of harbors or rivers that bear sewage, no one need ever hesitate to eat them raw. The trouble lies in the fact that, as Professor Kellogg puts it, "before food mollusca are marketed they are _almost invariably_ placed for a few hours in fresh water to undergo what the oystermen term the drinking process. Oysters sold in shell as well as those that have been shucked are usually subjected to the fresh water treatment. To make delays and the cost of transportation as light as possible, the localities selected for this are almost without exception in harbors or river mouths near large markets. In very many cases such waters bear the sewage of cities of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants."
With these facts--which have often been pointed out--before him, is it necessary to call the reader's attention to the circumstance that even if it had never been proved that oysters can serve as conveyers of deadly diseases, the process of floating them--that is, _bloating them with sewage_--must be condemned as unspeakably vile and disgusting?
What aggravates the matter is that oysters have what Professor Kellogg calls "wonderfully efficient mechanisms for _straining dangerous organisms out of the water_." "Several gallons of water every day pass through the gills of every full-grown oyster or clam, and every solid particle is removed from it and remains in the body." "It is thus plain that even if relatively few in the water, the chances are that a dangerous number of disease organisms will be strained out of it by these shellfish."
Indeed, were it not for the fact that most of these disease organisms are destroyed by the digestive fluids of oysters and those who eat them, there would be vastly more typhoid fever than there is now from the thirty million bushels that are sent to our markets every year from our shore beds. The danger comes from the organisms on the gills, or on the shell, which, in that case, it is not safe to handle.