Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1881-05-05
THE PORK QUESTION.
Unc0Oked Pork DangerOus-How Trichin2
Nav be DESTROYED.

UncoOked Pork Dangerous-How TrichinR
May be Destroyed.
Raw salt pork with little vinegar and
pepper has long been favorite dish in
many farmers family in the Northern
States during the cold winter months.
Hunters, trappers, lumbermen, and wood
choppers also make use of slices of raw
pork to make sandwich for luncheon, and
not few persons who read this will re-
member the time when slices of cold raw
pork and piece of bread helped to fill an
empty stomach on a winter day in the back
woods. Whether any of the thousands of
persons who have partaken of such food in
times past were injured by it will never be
known, but we know that there are num-
bers of them still living, in the enjoyment
of good health and green old age. But of
late it appears that the minute parasite
known as trichine is found more frequently
in pork than formerly; though whether this
is due to the increase in number of investi-
gators, and their vigilence in searching for
such objects of natural history, or because
the parasite has really become more COM
mon, it would be difficult to determine.
The fact, however, that it is occasionally
found in pork is sufficient ground for warn
ing consumers of this kind of meat of their
danger.
Trichin@ are very minute, varying from
eighteenth to one sixth Of an inch in
length, and yet they are the most danger
Gus of all the internal parasites known to
infest the human race. The mature worms
live in the intestines of the animals, but
the immature, or what are called cysts, live
in the muscles. They are found in the en-
cysted form in the flesh of hogs and various
other animals, but they can only reach ma
turity, or become fully developed and re-
produce their kind, when the meat of ami
mails which they infest is eaten by another,
thereby being set free by digestion, or dis
solving of the cysts. From the stomach
they pass into the bowels, where they pro-
pagate very rapidly, and millions of the
young bore outward and into the flesh and
muscles of their victims. The symptoms are
at first diarrhea, then violent muscular
pains like rheumatism, while the worms are
boring through the walls Of the intestines,
and later fever sets in. After the WORMS
reach the muscles and become encysted,
they cease to irritate, which occurs in six
or eight weeks, provided the person affect
ed lives that time.
To speak of treatment is not our province,
but prevention is legitimate subject for
discussion, and cannot be too strongly
urged upon every farmer who raises hogs
or person who eats pork. Cleanliness in
the hog pen and yard is the first step, and
the second is to avoid allowing hogs and
pigs to catch or eat rats or mice, which are
really the most prolific disseminators of
these dangerous parasites. Slaughter house
pork is the most dangerous of all, and it
should never be used until subjected to
Thorough microscopic examination.
Raw or half cooked pork should be ia
booed under all circumstances as danger
GUS, and the cooking must be very thor
ough and complete or some of the para
sites may escape destruction. Some re-
cent experiments of M. Vacher of Paris,
reported in the Lancet, shows that far
more heat is required to kill trichin@ than
has heretofore been supposed. He
affirms that protection given by cooking is
quite illusory, and that in the thorough
cooking in an ordinary joint Of meat the
temperature in the center is not sufficient
to insure the destruction of the parasite.
In preparing smoked bacon, hams, and
shoulders the trichin@ are in great part
destroyed, and all may be if the smoking is
thorough and continued long enough to en-
able the creosote or oil of smoke to reach
the very center Of the pieces; and we may
say that thorough smoking and thorough
cooking are among the best and most GER
tain preventives of trichinosis. While we
do not think there is any cause for alarm
on account of the few cases of this disease
recently reported in this country, or for
eschewing the use of pork on on that ac-
count, it is just as well to be on the safe side
by adopting well Unknown preventive meas
ures, both in the case of swine and in the
use of their meat.