Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1881-11-30

snd that It is supreme folly to injure the peo.
pie or France for the sake of an imaginary
danger The Swiss Journal de Geneve remarks
thae the Ministers in Paris, London and
Brussels have been compelled to acknowledge
that not a case of trichinosis from use of Ameri-
can meats has ever been authorifatively shown
70 have occurred In Belgium, France or Eng
land, and 1t ascribes the scare to the jealousy
OF European meat growers and the desire Of
Spectators In America TO break the PORK mar
ket, saying that a single Chicago firm is re-
ported TO have cleared 90, 900, ,000 francs in one
year by a skiIlful combination Mr. Mason
thinks the foreign trade in salted meats
can never be fully restored without es-
tablishing in this country a system of
official inspection which shall carry with it
the weight of State or Federal authority.
German municipal experience, notably in Ber-
lin has shown that a capable inspector can ex-
anime several hundred pieces per day. ami he
thinks young men Of ordinary education and
good eyesight could be trained in a fortnight,
by competent microscopic, to do this work,
and that the cost need not exceed three cents
per hog. Until this or some equivalent step is
taken. the l per cent of diseased hogs admit
ted to exist here will be serious obstacle to
the export trade in meats, for European meats
are ofhelRily inspected, and to be able
TO say that American are not is to give
opponents of cur trade the power to keep
up prejudice. An official report in review
OF the whole sdbject is needed. showing by
statistics the extent Of the hog product in this
country, the immunity of our people from
disease, how many hogs die Of cholera and
transportation accidents and what becomes Of
them, and the actual values of land and corn
in the pork-growing States. IL is often pub
lished, and is more or less believed, that the
comparative cheapness of our meats abroad is
because the bad or questionable qualities are
exported This can be combated by showing
that the cost of growing the best quality here
permits exporting it at the prices it bears
abroad Such a report should be published
under an official seal, which is. of all things
the most authoritative with a European, and
should be distributed abroad.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,
WAsHIEaToN, ID. c., October 2]th, 1881 (
E. ~ HUat, N. d., Secretary, ETC., State Board
of Health. Trenton. ". j.:
lily DzAR DoCToR-Your letter of inquiry OF
the 22d inst. is duly received. l will answer
your questions as fully as am able to do so.
You ask:
1. State the comparative number Of cases of
trichine that have been identified as to their
origin-viz: how many American, English,
French, Continental II this refers, as | sup
pose it does. to disease in humans, am una
BILE to answer.
2. How many live hogs are claimed to have
come from America with trichin@?
Prom the annual report of the English Vete-
rlnary Department for 1873, copy the follow
THE slaughter of large numbers Of Ameri-
can swine at the port OF landing afforded op-
portunity Of obtaining specimens Of flesh for
examination with the view TO ascertain what
pToportOn of the animals were infected with
trichir@ The inspectors OF the Veterinary
Department examined two hundred and seven
ty nine separate portions of swine's flesh which
were sent from Liverpool, and detected living
tyichin@ in three specimens. No
doubt, therefore, existed as TO the dangerous
character Of American pork, ami c0nSulta-
ton on the subject took place with the medi al
officers of the Local Government Board; the
matter was also discussed in the House of
Commons; but it was not deemed expedient to
prohibit the introduction of American pork
into this country for the reason that such
measure would have damaged tn trade with
out producing any satisfactory results, =
besides which trichinosis among swine is
known to exist in Germany, and it probably
exists in other exporting countries, so that
nothing short of total prohibition of swine
flesh in ali forms from all sources would have
been effectual The possibility of our own
swine being to some extent infected with
trichin@ has been suggested the result, how
ever, of many examinations has, up to this
time, been negative"
do not know that Germany or France has
even examined for this disease in iUe hogs
J. How much shipped pork has been iIenti
fed with it?
To foreign countries, Germany reports each
year some. if remember rightly, three to
four thousand pieces" of American pork -
where they get them, what a piece is
or what percentage of pieces examined
and found diseased. I have never seen
do not know that they have made any publicly,
neither do know that other foreign countries
have done any more than to say that they
found, upon examination, that trichin@ ex-
isted in American pork, as they had seen it
arriving in their countries.
4. Have Western hogs in any one section been
more affected? 1t has no such favorite locality
that we know of, although this will be q good
ground for future investigation.
5. Are trichinse found in the fat, as in cold
tried Iardf have until now thought not Prof
Taylor. of this depa tment (miscroscopis J.
tells me that in the Journal of the
Microscopical Association he has recent
ly seen that they have been found in
fat. 1 should rather see than believe
without so doing. A veterinarian of New Eng
land informed me on April 14th last that he
had examined portions from 2,701 Western
hogs, obtained in Boston, 154 of which he found
infected, T. e. case to each II 51-l00 hogs ex-
amined. He tells me that he will make a state
ment to this Savannah meeting that
he has examined portions of S,773 West
ern animals and has found l case to
there is a great difference between his
first (ApriD examination and this one, and his
result is so greatly different from the English
examination of our hogs, above mentioned,
and so much above any known percentage
among animals of every other country, that l
can't but entertain doubts of the value of his
examination.
While such facts are to be borne in mind, the
gravity of the disease, its cosmopolitan char
acteF and the interest both OF health, life and
trade require that under the lead and authority
of the United States Government there should
be such testing of facts as will be fully reliable
and not depend on single observers. and that
some plan be devised 10 secure both to animals
and mankind immunity from this direful in
vasion.
The latest and most graphic outline OF the
disease is given incidentally IN scientific ad-
dress by the veteran naturalist, Richard Owen,
who gave it the name trichinae. IG is worthy
of transcription: THE finding of the wormlet
within the cysticule in 1885 proceedings OF the
biological Society Of London, February 2t,
1885,, (also Transactions, ioid to vol: y, and
a.. Of nn bar
of Dresden, in 1860, of its causatiYe relations to
q direful disease have demonstrated that the
several groups Of symptoms TO which have
referred under the respective technical de-
nominations applied 10 their groups. may.
one and all, be due to the deglutilion Of
trichinae SpiraliS.
1t is thus all the more serious because the
symptoms simulate so many diseases, such as
dyspepsia. common diarrhoed, dysentery, peri
tOnitis, pneumonia, rheumatism. gout, typhoid
fever and endocarditis. THE larvB Of this
wormlet In the flesh of the animal 1t infested,
being introduced as food into the human
stomach, finds in that warm cavity an envt-
ronment of muco chymous nutriment in which
1t rapidly natures, acquires activities and de-
velops its generative organs and products.
II permitted to pass into the intestinal canal,
it there excludes its progeny, which also
rapidly acquire their full size and provocative
faculty. But the grave symptoms or their
presence are due to the curious migratory in
stiucts of the young trichinse, W ich impels
them TO make their escape by perforatlng the
tunic of the intestines, in the course or which
operation the majority find their way into the
venous eapillaries. Such as wriggle through
the meshes OF the vascular net work bore
their way through the serouS tunic or the gut
and pass into the abdominal cavity, where
upon the peritonitic are complicated with the
entefitic symptoms But the majority are car
ried to the right side of the heart, and thence
by the pulmonary artery to the lungs. Tread
ing then the capiuarles continuous with the
commencement of the pulmonary veins, the
trichinaa are brought back to the heart. As
many as may have burrowed INTO the vascular
walls of the right or the left ventricle, or may
have got into the cavity OF the perlcardluu,
give rise to the symptoms summed up In the
terms of art already cited.
TrichinR, which may have strayed into the
tissue of the lungs, or which may have wrlg-
gied through the pulmonic serous covering,
aud from the pleural cavity may have INVADED
the ssrous membrane on their way to the in-
tercostal muscles, add the pleuritic and pull
monic TO the pericarditlc symptoms. me
natural affinity or attraction or the
triehine is to myonine or the
came TO an end. They are conveyed so soon
and so rapidly by branches of the csrotids 10
the muscles Of the larynx, that the trichin8
are there found most constantly and abundant
w. but usually so vast is their number that they
are carried 70 the voluntary muscles or the en-
tire body. In the exceedingly delicate con-
nective tissue of the ultimate bundles OF the
ultimate fbrils, the young trichinse coil them
selves up to their larval repose, exciting no
other organic change than an overflow OF
plasma which condenses with the contiguous
cellulosity and becomes moulded into the shape
of an elliptic case, in which may be seen under
of the tiny worms disposed in two or more CIR
An ounce of hogs muscle has been found to
contain S. 900 trichinse. while Thudicum estl-
mated 40, ,OOO, 600 in the body Of German who
died in the London Hospital, and Cobbold. VINO
reviewed the calculation. thought this oelo