UNIQUE POISONING CASE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 71, 24 March 1926, Page 9

UNIQUE POISONING CASE

—-♦ GERM IN A DUCK'S EGG.

(From Our Own Corresp-ndent.) LONDON, 9th February. Evidence regarding a deadly germ in a cluck's egg, described as the first case of the kind in the United Kingdom, was given at an adjourned inquest at Stepney on Selina Vogt, aged 24, of Mile End. Dr. B. I. Guthrie, the Bast London Coroner, has ordered an analysis of,the stomach. Mr. John Webster, Home Office analyst, stated that there had been found a bacillus, Aertryckc, in enormous quantities in the organs, and he was of opinion that this could safely bo presumed to have been the cause of the trouble which led to death; The mother of the young woman said that on 23rd December her daughter and four other members of the family had a meal consisting of ducks' eggs. Her daughter had had nothing to eat for many hours previously, nor after that before becoming ill. Dr. D. L. Thomas, Medical Officer of Health for Stepney, stated that the appearances of the abdominal organs were quite consistent with those of .food poisoning. He sent some of the organs to the bacteriologist of the Ministry of Health, who reported that "the bacillus Aertrycke was isolated in abundance, and death might safely be presumed to have been due to that infection." HEAT-RESISTING. Bacillus Aertrycke, said .the doctor, was one of the Gaertner group, associated with food poisoning from eating meat, the symptoms usually appearing within twenty^four hours of tho food being partaken of, although they might appear almost at once. It was relatively heat-resisting, so that boiling for a time did not destroy the toxicity. The ordinary boiling or frying which the eggs underwent in cooking was not sufficient. As far as he could make out, continued Dr. Thomas, there had been no record in the United Kingdom of any cases of food poisoning from eggs, but in French literature there were some cases in which ducks' eggs were implicated. An American bacteriological investigator, Rosenberger, found coli bacilli in eggs, and he was tho only one who had recorded any investigations on the matter. Thcrj wa3 no doubt that bacteria could penetrate the shell into the egg, and if coli bacilli would do so tSie Aertrycke bacillus could do so also.