Considering the gravity of this disease, it would be of the greatest importance to be able to decide, during its life, whether a pig were trichinous or not. On this point there is some difference of opinion ; but profs. Delpech and Reynal, who were charged by the French government to report upon this disease, assert that " the animal, while living, shows no signs of the presence of trichinae, nor can they be detected in the meat with an ordinary lens, but a powerful microscope renders them * once visible." In Han over, out of MOO pigs, 11 were found trichinous; in Brunswick 16 were affected out of 14,000, while in Blakenburg 4 were diseased out of 700. The French commissioners assert that a temperature of 167° Fahr. is sufficient to kill the parasites, and that meat thoroughly salted is also perfectly safe; they advise that smoke-dried sausages, though probably safe, should be well boiled. They further attribute the spread of the disease among pigs to the fact that they are foul feeders, and will eat any offal, such as the dead bodies of rats and other animals, which are known to be liable to the disease. They recommend farmers to be very cautious in feeding their pigs to avoid giving them flesh without first boiling it; to destroy rats and small carnivorous animals, and never to leave human or other excrements in places where pigs can reach them. Finally, they
advise all experimenters to burn trichinous flesh when their investigation is completed, and not to throw it away, for a fragment of it might possibly be eaten by a rat, the rat devoured by a pig, and the pig thus become the medium of the disease to man. This utter destruction of the parasites is a point on which our countryman, Dr. Cobbold, has long insisted. In 1863 a trichinous pig from Valparaiso, killed on board a merchant vessel on the high seas, caused the death of two of the crew; • and in 1864 there was a slight trichinous epidemic at Cheektowaga, New York. Probably trichina-disease is a common ailment in this and other countries; its symptoms, save in very severe cases, attracting no special notice, from their similarity to those of rheumatic disease and acute febrile attacks. The disease has been known to occur in the n.w. of England in a mild form; but helminthology, and the detection of parasites of all kinds, requires still much cultivation at the hands of the medical profession. In 1835 Mr. Wood, of Bristol, published, in the Medical Gazette, a case of acute rheumatism accompanied by pneumonia, in which trichinae were discovered after death; thus all but anticipating Zenker in discovering a new disease.
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