PARROT DISEASE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3972, 29 April 1930, Page 24

PARROT DISEASE.

EXPERT EVIDENCE AT INQUEST

RESEARCH AT LONDON HOSPITALS. (From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, March 6. At an inquest held on a consulting engineer who died at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital from parrot disease, Mr Mervyn H. Gordon, consulting bacteriologist of the hospital, gave evidence concerning his research work.

Psittacosis, he said, was the name given to a condition resembling influenza and pneumonia which might occur in human beings who had been in contact with imported parrots. It had been known for 50 years, and there was a big outbreak in 1891 and 1892. In that instance 300 out of 500 newly-imported parrots died, and among people who came into contact with them there were 42 eases of psittacosis and 14 deaths. Last year there was a considerable outbreak in Argentina, the disease in human beings appearing to take the form of broncho-pneumonia, and the condition was associated with typhoid. Investigations into one of the French outbreaks resulted in the organism being called the bacillus psittacosis, but further inquiry showed that it was not peculiar to the parrot at all, and that it was a bacillus common in food poisoning carried by rats and mice, and capable of causing outbreaks of enteritis. The witness described how he inoculated several love-birds, which became ill, and some of which died. Blood taken from Heaton (on whom tire inquest was held) was injected into two love-birds, which were absolutely unaffected, but he understood he did not give enough blood. After the post mortem examination he injected three more birds, and they remained unaffected. On February 6, he received from Wimbledon a dead parrot with no beak, and found no lesions. On February 8 he had another parrot that he believed belonged to Mr Heaton, and after being injected the bird lived for 17 days. There was no doubt, however, that the parrots were diseased. There was probably virus in the parrot’s organs, but it could not be found.

Mr George Bruce Chapman, of Tottenham Court road, said that he imported on an average 4000 parrots a year. He had never known any of his employees to suffer as a result of handling them, with the exception of being bitten. Lieutenant - colonel Albert Ernest Hamerton, pathologist to the Zoological Society, London, said that he had a collection of 500 parrots and the keepers had never suffered in any way. He thought the best way to prevent infection was to carry out a broad principle of hygiene and not to handle or caress the birds. A FILTERABLE VIRUS. At the quarterly court of governors of the London Hospital Lord Knutsford (president) said that 10 cases of psittacosis had been treated in the London Hospital. The medical staff had had quite a number of eases in their private practices and a very careful research had been made into the disease by doctors m the laboratories connected with the hospital. “ This.” remarked Lord Knutsford, “is not a new disease. As far back as 1880 there had been small outbreaks of it on the Continent. In 1893 Nocard, a Frenchman, isolated a bacillus which he thought was the cause of the disease, and subsequent investigations have been devoted to prove or disprove his discovery. Some people still claim that his view is the correct one.

“The researches conducted in our laboratories disprove Nocard's conception of the causation of parrot fever. Over 20 human cases and 15 parrots have been examined. Not one of the human cases showed any evidence of infection with Nocard’s bacillus, and the same was true of the parrots, six in number which had been actually responsible for the human cases.

“ More than this (which is only negative evidence), important positive findings have been obtained by our researchers. A filterable virus, belonging to the group of disease agents which produce such conditions as smallpox, measles, foot-and-mouth disease, has been isolated from both human and parrot cases. This virus has been closely studied, and as the result of the work in our laboratories there would seem to be little doubt that this filterable virus, which has been isolated by the London Hospital investigation, is the agent responsible for parrot fever.”