1960 Volume 34 Issue 6 Pages 634-638
Food poisoning due to Cl. welchii was experienced in September 1959 in Sano City of Tochigi Prefecture.
1. The patients were all adults, 3 men and 3 women, 6 persons in total.
2. One of them died. Mortality rate was 16.7%.
3. The incubation period was 15-17 hours.
4. The major signs and symptoms consisted of severe abdominal pain and watery diarrhea, a fever being hardly noticed. Dehydration, emaciation and several vomiting were also recognized.
5. The poisoning was presumably caused by row slides of earshells.
6. No dysentery or salmonella bacilli was isolated from blood and stools of the patients or earshell slides. Thermostable Cl. welchii, however, was isolated from stools of the patients and the cooks as well as from the causative food.
7. It was presumed that Cl. welchii multiplied in the airtight condition, after the food, contaminated by the cooks, carriers of the agent, was heated and preserved in an airtight sack.
