Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899: Volume LVI, No. 1Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899: Volume LVI, No. 1
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
That a profuse diarrhoea may render the flesh of an animal unfit
food for man was demonstrated by the cases studied by Gärtner. In this
instance the cow was observed to have a profuse diarrhoea for two
days before she was slaughtered. Both the raw and cooked meat from this
animal poisoned the persons who ate it. Medical literature contains the
records of many cases of meat poisoning due to the eating of the flesh
of cows slaughtered while suffering from puerperal fever. It has been
found that the flesh of animals dead of symptomatic anthrax may retain
its infection after having been preserved in a dry state for ten years.
One of the most frequently observed forms of meat poisoning is that
due to the eating of decomposed sausage. Sausage poisoning, known
as _botulismus_, is most common in parts of Germany. Germans who
have brought to the United States their methods of preparing sausage
occasionally suffer from this form of poisoning. The writer had
occasion two years ago to investigate six cases of this kind, two
of which proved fatal. The sausage meat had been placed in uncooked
sections of the intestines and alternately frozen and thawed and
then eaten raw. In this instance the meat was infected with a highly
virulent bacillus, which resembled very closely the _Bacterium coli_.
In England, Ballard has reported numerous epidemics of meat poisoning,
in most of which the meat had become infected with some nonspecific,
poison-producing germ. In 1894 the writer was called upon to
investigate cases of poisoning due to the eating of pressed chicken.
The chickens were killed Tuesday afternoon and left hanging in a market
room at ordinary temperature until Wednesday forenoon, when they were
drawn and carried to a restaurant and here left in a warm room until
Thursday, when they were cooked (not thoroughly), pressed, and served
at a banquet in which nearly two hundred men participated. All ate
of the chicken, and were more or less seriously poisoned. The meat
contained a slender bacillus, which was fatal to white rats, guinea
pigs, dogs, and rabbits.
Ermengem states that since 1867 there have been reported 112 epidemics
of meat poisoning, in which 6,000 persons have been affected. In 103 of
these outbreaks the meat came from diseased animals, while in only five
was there any evidence that putrefactive changes in the meat had taken
place. My experience convinces me that in this country meat poisoning
frequently results from putrefactive changes.
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