Hygiene: a manual of personal and public health.

  • Arthur Newsholme
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hygiene: a manual of personal and public health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    36/372 (page 24)
    H joint is completely cooked in its interior. When trichinous pork is swallowed, the eggs develop in the alimentary canal in about a week into complete worms, and in three or four days more each female produces over a hundred young ones. These burrow into every part of the body, producing great irritation and inflamma- tion. In one case after death upwards of 50,000 worms were estimated to exist in a square inch of muscle. Most of the Fig. 3. cases of trichinosis have Trichina Capsulated in Flesh. occurred in Germany, from (Magnified.) ^^^i^g imperfectly cooked sausages. ihe pig becomes trichinous by eating offal, and man is infected by eating pork. This disease is rare in England. (3) Tuberculous Meat, from animals suffering from tuber- culosis, has been found to cause tuberculosis in small animals experimentally fed on it. Koch has recently thrown doubt on the communicability of bovine tuberculosis to man ; but this point must be regarded as still unsettled (see page 312). Sheep are rarely affected by it, but it is very common in cattle, especially in cows, and it is a serious economical question whether the meat of all such animals should be condemned. The ideal would be to condemn all such animals, as tuberculosis is an infective disease, and the bacillus which causes it (as well as the toxic products of its activity) may be present in meat which shows no actual signs of disease, except in the lungs or other internal organs. In practice, however, the rules laid down by the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis, in 1898, should be followed for the present. These state that:— The entire carcase and all the organs may be seized [a) when there is miliary tuberculosis of both lungs, {h) when tuberculous lesions are present on the pleura and peritoneum, or {c) in the muscular system, or in the lymphatic glands embedded in or between the muscles, or {d) when tuberculous lesions exist in any part of an emaciated carcase. The carcase, if otherwise healthy, shall not be condemned, but every part of it containing tuberculous lesions shall be seized {a) when the lesions are confined to the lungs and the thoracic lymphatic glands, {b) when the lesions are confined to the liver, [c] or to the phayngeal lymphatic glands, or {d) to any combination of the foregoing, but are collectively small in extent. They also add that any degree of tuberculosis in the pig should secure the condemnation of the entire carcase, owing to the greater tendency to generalisation of tuberculosis in this animal; and that in foreign meat, seizure should ensue in every case where the pleura has been stripped. (See also page 312.) (4) Other Infective diseases besides tuberculosis may render meat wholly or partially unfit for food. Of these pleuro-pneumonia may not require condemnation of the entire carcase; but in the following this course should be adopted, cattle-plague, pig typhoid (pneumo-enteritis), anthrax, and quarter ill, as well as in sheep-pox. In puerperal fever, actinomycosis, and sheep-rot (liver flukes) each case must be decided on its merits.