TRICHINA; are small parasites or worms which are found in pork, and which after entering the human system breed rapidly and pass directly through the walls of the intestines and bury themselves in the muscles of the sufferer. The young are barely visible to the naked eye. They can exist in extraordinary num bers in the smallest compass. Twenty millions of them have been estimated as existing in one diseased person.
This parasite is far more common among Germans than any other classes, probably because of their habit of eating smoke dried sausage and other preparations of pork which are only part ly cooked. Thoroughly salted meats are said to be free from them, and careful-and complete cooking is a good general preventive, but on this point considerable variety of opinion exists.
It is commonly believed that ordinary cooking will destroy trichin and render infested meat innocuous. Without doubt, says the London Lancet, as has been stated in the daily press, "the encapsuled parasites cannot survive a certain elevation of temper ature, and death renders them harmless." It is, however, hardly correct to say that a "complete means of protection is furnished by the heat incidental to cookery ?" Considerable doubt is thrown on this statement by M. Vacher, of Paris, whose authority is of
considerable weight. He affirms that the protection given by cooking is quite illusory, and that in the thorough cooking of an ordinary joint of meat the temperature in the centre is not suffi cient to insure the destruction of the parasite. He took a leg of pork of moderate size and boiled it thoroughly. A thermometer placed within it at a depth of two inches and a half registered, after half an hour's boiling, 86 degrees Fahr., after boiling for an hour, 218 degrees, after an hour and a half, 149 degrees, and af ter two hours and a half, when the joint was thoroughly cooked, 165 degrees. This temperature M. Vacher maintains is insuffi cient, and we must remember that at the centre, which is still fur ther from the surface than the bulb of the thermometer was placed, the temperature would not be so high. " Trichinae would escape almost entirely the action of boiling water" in cooking.