ABOUT POISONS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 91, 14 October 1922, Page 12

ABOUT POISONS

WRONG IDEAS REGARDING FOOD.

Whenever a tragtfly occurs associated with poisoning by food, such as that which at Loch Maree resulted in seven deaths, says a bacteriologist in the "Daily Mail," there is always talk of "ptomaine" poisoning.

Ab a matter of fact, no cases of ptomaine poisoning have anything to do with ptomaines. Ptomaines are chemical substances, resulting from the putrefaction of meat, fish, and other protein, substances. Their bad reputation ap-. pears to be due to an old tale to the effect that the Borgias prepared their most efficient poisons by allowing dead pigs to rot in the sun and collecting the liquid which dropped from'them. Actu-, ally, ptomairiee "are for the most- part relatively harmless arid seldom, if ever, cause death. If they did there would be a high mortality among those who like their -game ■ "high." ■ True food poisoning is always due to the activities of bacteria, butit falls into 'two Glasses, according to the nature of the bacteria, concerned. In the first place, it may be due to bacteria actually living in the food at the time of its 1 consumption. Secondly, as apparently in the Loch Maree outbreak,, it may result from poisons—toxins—left by b"acteria which once lived in the food but are possibly since dead.

The first class of food poisoning is the commoner in this country. It resulta from the eating of food which has become contaminated by certain bacteria belonging to the same family as those 'which cause enteric fever. . Tlie, presence of these 1 bacteria may be due to disease of the food animal before it was slaughtered;'more usually, however, they gain access to the food in course of its preparation. The heat used in cooking is generally sufficient to kill them, which explains why the second mode of contamination is the more common. In a recent epidetriic the instrument of infection was a soiled knife used in cutting ham for sandwiches. In this class of food poisoning the microbe actually lives and multiplies in the patient, giving rise to an acute infection characterised by fever, Vomiting, and diarrhoea. Some epidemics are fatal; others may be mild, according to the tjrpe of microbe concerned.

It is the second '.class of food poisoning, that-diie tea toxin formed by organisms, themselves possibly long 1 since dead, that the recent outbreak at Loch Maree apparently belmigs. The microbe concerned in this class of cases is the bacillus botulinus, so oalled from its having first been discovered in sausage (German), which is named botuius in Latin.

This bacterium lives in the absence of oxygen, and consequently can thrive in air-tight tins or inside, sausage skins. It elaborates a most powerful toxin, which acts upon the nerve Centres in the lower parts of the brain, causing, among other symptoms, para.iys.is of the muscles which njj've the eye and eyelids and of those concerned in speech and swallowing. The toxin is one of the most powerful known, minute doses causing death. The disease resulting from its action is known (is botulism; it is rare in England, but fairly 1 common in Germany an<J America. ,

Ordinary food poisoning and botulism, then, are as different as typhoid fever and poisoning by arsenic. The former is an infection, the latter a simple pois-. bningi A 'tin of foo3 infected by the organisms of the former may be Tendered .harmless by cooking, provided the temperature used is high enough, as (his ■will kill-./lie organisms. A tin of. food infected by the bacillus botulinus remains 'deadly eveii after the organisms have been destroyed, since the toxin remains.

' In any case, however, ptomaines are never concerned in ''ptomaine" poisoning.