The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-25
THE SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION
 OF "PTOMAINE POISONING''
IN PRECAUTIONS S
 

Boston, Dec, 24. 1904.-Just what "ptomaine poisoning" really is puzzles the average man. For some years 1t has been the fashion to attribute any sudden and otherwise unexpiainable local epidemic of disease to this dread cause-a form of bacterial action very vaguely understood by most of us and only beginning to be reduced to exact scientific knowledge by the accumulate ing investigations of students of bac- teriology.
 For example, it is undoubtedly. true that all articles of food canned goods, if properly prepared, are about the safest from the action of the bugs that make the ptomaines." Yet they have long been popularly believed to be the most dangerous. And the reason. when one comes to think about it. is fairly obvious. The canned goods are gener- ally prepared from fresh material, used before there Is opportunity for decom- position to reach the danger point. and they are further freed from danger of bacterial action by careful sterilization. And If these safeguards have proved in efficient, as in rare instances they do there remains a method by which the consumer can tell whether or not the contents of a given can are perfectly wholesome. All that is necessary Is to
 
 are within, you may De sure that they will have been at work and that their labor will have produced gases which in turn will have affected the shape of the can. If its ends bulge ever so slightly don't buy 1t. But if the ends of the can are concave the con- tents are quite safe and sane." to bor- row the slogan of recent campaign ora tors. Once the can Is opened, however. the contents are as subject to bacterial attack as any other food product would he and must be kept as carefully.
 This whole subject. according to Pro- lessor S. c. Prescott of the department of industrial biology at the Massachu- setts Institute of Technology. is now much better understood by the experts than formerly, and the main features of 1t can easily be made intelligible to tho man in the street. For d long time after the ptomaine or poisonous sub stances. were first discovered. 1t was imagined that they were themselves a form of bacteria. But it Is now well known that they are simply poisonous substances, produced by the combined action of hundreds of minute organisms the so-called "putrefying" bacteria .--on the food products eaten by all kinds of humanity except the vegeteri- ans. The ptomaines are. therefore, practically as many in number as the different animal food products-but all alike in their power to make trouble for humanity. All are alike, also. in that they indece evils which are preventable One important reason. for example, why pork has attained so unenviable reputation for unwholesome qualities is due not to the personal habits of Mr. Pig. but to the carless way in which he has been handled while being trans- formed into sausage. The subject, therefore, Is obviously one of vital in- portance to human well-belng--so much so that it not only absorbs the atten- tion of many individual scientists but has become of late years an important part of the bacteriological work of such an institution as the Massachu- setts Institution of Technology, where not only instructors but also advanced students are constantly working along specific lines of individual research. And fit is owing to such researches, the world over. that ptomaine poison ing Is losing its terror in proportion as it is made more and more unlikely by scientific methods in the prepara- tion of food products.
 The name ptomaine has a rather