On poisoning by diseased pork : being an essay on trichinosis, or flesh-worm disease, its prevention and cure / by Julius Althaus.

  • Julius Althaus
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On poisoning by diseased pork : being an essay on trichinosis, or flesh-worm disease, its prevention and cure / by Julius Althaus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    drunk was analysed; and, altliougli no poison was found, tlie host continued to be suspected, and was at last obliged to emigrate. The second case in point has been described by Mr. Henry Wood, of Bristol, in the London Medical Gazette for 1835. A man, aged 22, was admitted to the Bristol Infirmary with a violent attach of acute rheumatism; the pain and tenderness of his limbs and trunk were so great as to render him unable to support him- seK. He was brought into the house on the back of his father. He was a stout athletic-looking man, and was stated by his friends to have been, up to the time of his illness, very healthy and powerful. A fortnight previous to his admission, he showed signs of indisposition which were attributed to an ordinary cold ; the pain in his limbs increased rapidly; he was much troubled with cough and dyspnoea, and he kept his bed six days before his admission into the hospital. He died seven days afterwards, and it was found that there were pneumonia and pericarditis ; while in the muscles were seen appearances, in many respects similar to those described by Mr. Owen :—The trichinse^were confined to the interfascicular membrane of the large muscles, and princi]3aUy to those of the chest and shoulder; being most apparent in the pectoral and deltoid, less so in those of the arm, and becoming still fewer in the legs. Mr. Wood concludes his very interesting paper by stating, that he endeavoured to gain assistance from some members of the profession in making further observations at the time ; but he was foiled, as it appeared to him, from the want of proper value being attached to the microscope as a means of pathological research. The symptoms described by him are those commonly observed in Trichina Disease. Trichinas were first noticed in England, where in 1832, Mr. Hilton, of Guy's Hospital, noticed in the pectoral muscles of a man aged 70, who had died of cancer, the cysts in which the worms are generally found enclosed, and which appear to the Fig. 1. naked eye as small white specks. Mr. Hilton believed these cor- puscles to be dependent upon the formation of very small cysticerci.