POISONING BY DISEASED MEAT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5357, 7 September 1895, Page 2

POISONING BY DISEASED MEAT.

Attention has been called afresh to tne subjeot of ptomaine poisoning by two recent outbreaks probably attributable to that oauße. One of these took place at Leicester, where, after partaking of tinned meat, all the members of two families, numbering twenty-two person*, became ill, and one of them died. The other out* break was reported from Lame, County Antrim. A man purchased some real on a Saturday, and, having shared it with two other families, all partook of it on the Sunday. On Monday morning nearly a dozen peraonß who had eaten of the veal became alarmingly ill. One of them died ; the rest, at the time of the report, were i slowly recovering. Ab ii now well recognised, poisoning by the ptomaines, or the toxio albumoseß produced in the process of decomposition or microbial growth, may occur in two forms. Food may become infected by living micro<orgaaisa», which, being swallowed, may then develop poisonoub products within the body, or they may have already produced these products before the food has been swallowed. The results are different. In both oases toxic effects are produced, bnb while in the I latter they occur rapidly, stimulating I oases of chemical poisoning, which in fact they are, in the former a more or less lengthened period of incubation' is observed. It should aIBO be observed that, while cooking is a proteotion from infection by microbes contained in food, it is not necessarily protective against poisoning by ptomaines already produced in food before it has been cooked. It is stated by the veterinary Burgeons of Belgium that most of the oases of poisoning by butcher's meat are caused by the meat of animals dead or ill of an ill-defined enteritis, which goes by the name of the " diarrhoea, of calves," but greatly resembles that whioh has been observed at Moorseele (van Ermengem). The subject is one 1 of considerable interest in regard to food supplies, for it is to be feared that at present there is very little check plaoed in the way of "slink" butchers, and that in the disposal of a dead oalf almost anything is possible.— British Medical Journal.