Parasites: A Treatise on the Entozoa of Man and Animals: Including Some Account of the EctozoaCobbold, T. Spencer (Thomas Spencer)
Science
Parasites: A Treatise on the Entozoa of Man and Animals: Including Some Account of the Ectozoa
Cobbold, T. Spencer (Thomas Spencer)
Helminths; Parasites
irrigation of fields with sewage.’ The editor, of course, made this
statement on independent grounds, and on his own responsibility. If he
had said the subject bears an indirect relation to the sewage question,
he would have said no more than is absolutely true, for, as I shall
take occasion to explain, there is every reason to suppose that certain
forms of parasitic disease may be propagated by means of sewage. In this
connection some of you may be disposed to ask the question:--‘Are there
any sources of comfort to be gathered from the facts?’ Or you may say,
supposing that in future our British swine are not as free from Trichinæ
as they have been hitherto, can we possibly avoid the contingency of
playing the part of host to those creatures? Certainly, I reply, it is
simply a question of properly cooking the food. If these farmers have
not cooked their food at all, or scarcely at all, that will at once
account for their being laid up. I should tell you that the lady and
the daughter are recovering, and that they are convalescent, but the
man-servant is very ill. If, during cooking, the flesh consumed by these
persons had been raised to a persistent temperature of 170° Fahr., then,
doubtless, the ingestion of trichinised pork would have done no harm.
You observe that Dr Dickinson says in his letter that they partook of it
roasted and boiled. Now, few of us are in the habit of eating underdone
pork, although there are other meats that we devour very readily in an
imperfectly cooked state. It must be remembered, also, that although
the exterior may have been subjected to a temperature of 212 degrees,
it by no means follows that the whole of the joint throughout must have
been submitted to that temperature. Under rapid cooking, the centre of a
large joint may remain much below even 140 degrees. If the man-servant
ate only one ounce of the flesh with living Trichinæ in it, he will
probably have at this present moment at least 42,000,000 of these guests
in his muscles. You will ask, ‘Will he recover?’ ‘Yes; if he ate no
more than that.’ If he has eaten 2 oz. thoroughly underdone, depend
upon it he has 80,000,000, and if he has eaten 3 oz. he will have over
100,000,000 of Trichinæ in his muscles. Could he survive if he had eaten
over 3 oz., and thus have 100,000,000 and upwards of these inhabitants?
I think he could. We have evidence on this point from the case in which
I estimated that there were upwards of 100,000,000 of Trichinæ present,
and yet the man survived the attack.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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