Volume 1

Text-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by Arthur P. Luff.

  • Arthur P. Luff
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Text-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by Arthur P. Luff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    factive changes induced by it, may be fleeting as regards their existences, since the micro-organism may be killed by its own products, or the chemical poison, from its unstable nature, may undergo decomposition ; so that an infected food which may be poisonous at one time may fail to be poisonous at a later period. (e) In many of the cases of food poisoning that have occm'red, an incubation period has been noticed, although in some cases it is practically wanting. When an incubation period occurs, in all probability that period is being employed by the micro-organism growing and cultivating itself within the human l)ody, and producing its poisonous chemical sub- stance, to which the symptoms arising at the end of this period are no doubt due. When symptoms are produced by poisonous food without an incubation period (that is, in from half an hour to a few hours after taking the food), they are probably due to the action of an organic chemical poison previously manufactm-ed in the food. This is what one would naturally infer, since a micro- organism, as in the other specific infections, would requhe time to grow, and to develop its chemical poison ; whereas an article of food containing an already develo]3ed chemical poison would naturally operate more speedily, and the rapidity of the action of the ]3oison would depend upon the amount of it taken, its poisonous nature, and on the idiosyncrasy of the individual taking the poisonous food. (/) That the symptoms induced by poisonous food are not always due to chemical poisons previously produced in the article consumed, but that they are due to a true infection, is shown by the fact that extremely virulent micro-organisms have been found in articles of food, and in the viscera of persons dying from the consumption of such articles. As was shown in the Portsmouth pie-poisoning case, some of these bacilli may not be pathogenic or disease-producing on inoculation, though when taken by the mouth they may produce a chemical poison, which, absorbed from the ahmentary canal, is capable of producing