MAN KILLED BY LOVE-BIRDS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 146, 20 May 1930, Page 2

MAN KILLED BY LOVE-BIRDS.

GERM TOO TINY TO FILTER. DISEASE KNOWN 50 YEARS AGO. A man’s death from psittacosis, or parrot disease, contracted from love birds, was investigated at a London inquest on Clive Burton Heaton, aged 50. a consulting engineer, of Cambridge Road, Wimbledon, London, S.W., who died in St. Bartholomew's Hospital. It was stated that Mr Heaton recently bought two monkeys and eight parrots, including some small, longtailed ones known as love birds. Miss Annie Burgess, housekeeper to Mr Heaton, eaid that one of the lovebirds died on December 26, another two or three days later, and a third recently. She was ill for three weeks in January with what was thought to be parrot disease. Dr. Mervyn H. Gordon, consulting bacteriologist to the hospital, and a research worker for the Medical Research Council, said psittacosis was a name given for a condition resembling influenza and pneumonia, and might occur in a human being who had come in contact with a recently imported parrot. The disease had been known for more than 50 years, but new light had recently been thrown on the causation of the disease. The organism was now thought to be closely associated with newly imported parrots, and took the form of pneumonia in the first instance. Investigations in France showed that the bacillus was not peculiar to the parrot but was the common cause of food poisoning carried bv rats and mice, and capable of causing outbreaks of enteritis.

A TINY VIRUS.

The virus of psittacosis was so small that it would go through a filter where other bacilli would not. Psittacosis was of the virus class, and if they could find tho cause of it they might produce specific remedies. He had inoculated several love birds which became ill and some of which died. He did not think that parrots got the disease in their natural surroundings. The-- might get it when carried off to crowded market places for 6ale. Mr Danford Thomas, the deputycoroner, said he had had a grey parrot for many years, and it had had nothing the matter with it. Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Ernest Hamerton, pathologist to the Zoological Society, said at the Zoo there were 500 parrots and there had been no illness among the staff. The best precaution to keep parrots from infection was to put them in quarantine on exhibition and to carry out a broad principle of hygiene in regard to cleanliness, cages and antiseptics, and for persons not to handle or caress the birds. The jury found that death was due to svneope and exhaustion while suffering from psittacosis, contracted from love birds.