The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-06-18

length in 1s77s
 To omit the further technical treat ment of the worm. which is designateu
 kind of parasite. the report. as 1t pro-
 ceeds. goes on: -
 The presence of the hair worm in capage and the unfortunate notoriety \ which. has been given to 1t, including the circulation of the merest rumors. mostly vague and uncertain, of so l many persons being poisoned by eating anected cabbage, has seriously injured | the money value of this vegetable very | generally throughout the affected states. Although the cabbage hair- | worm is not in the slightest degree | deieterious to health, the credence I given to the most absurd rumors which ! were circulated has injured cabbage | consumption and hence for sale.
 ! Tn parts of Illinois, the fears of | growers and purchasers were such that farmers were letting their cabbage go | to waste. At Quinter, Kansas. quant- 1 ities of cabbage shipped from Colorado were reported burned because of the presence of the hair-worm. In Ten nessee 1t was estimated that in 1904 | fully 35 per cent of the cabbage crop of the State was lost-in fact a sudden l and complete suspension of the indus | try was actually caused. Similar re- l ports were received from various por- tions of Missouri. Iowa. West Virginia, and Virginia. In Missouri hundreds | of barrels of sauerkraut were destroy | ed through fear that the dreaded l snake might be part of the ingre- dients. At Columbia, Mo. hundreds of | dollars worth of cabbage were lost. | Many gardeners claimed that they | could not sell a single head on account of the snake scare."
 | The report concludes with a sort of | .f tnf. ,f 1fn nrf iamounted to nothing more than scare in fact. Stories were circulated of whole families being poisoned by eat 1 ing cabbage affected with the hair | worm. sometimes with the reservation | that Tho one knew personally of their | truth, and that many cases were traced to their source and found to be utterly | without foundation. From Tennessee came a report of the death in one town | of a man. woman and six children. l Tn portions of the same, and in other l States persons were stated to have been taken i'll with pain and vomiting | after having eaten cabbage on which | the worms were subsequently, found. | Possibly the consumers had been seized with temporary hysteria, imagining | that they had unconsciously eaten many individuals, hence the symptoms. | Others were reported severely poisoned | or dead. In most cases exact localities were furnished. but names were want | ing. In some cases domestic animals | were said to have been poisoned: in | others cabbages were fed to them | without any i'll results"
 1 After repeating a few more stories | of the i1arm wrought by the scare and a technical life history of the par asite, the bulletin proceeds
 "In spite of repeated published and written statements that the so-called | ic fact has not been given very general lcredence, hence the matter Is still im- perfectly understood by many. As 1t is an established fact that none of the lhair-worms possesses poisonous prop critics, it is not considered necessary to make any analyses or experiments at this Departments to demonstrate ltheir nontoxic quality.
 However, pr. Louis Lercy, Nashville. lTenn., who cotresponded with this of
 flee on this topic during August and
 September, 1904, undertook to demon- strate beyond peradventure Of doubt that the hair-worm could not possibly
 cause harm to persons eating n or cabbage on which 1t had occurred. and, although he has already published on fine subject it may be we'll, for the benefit of skeptics, to repeat in sub~ stance his conclusions:
 Snake Tales.
 During Septemebr he wrote that ne | had carried on a thorough investigation
 of the alleged poisonous nature or tni' l hafr-worm, and found absolutely noun
 ing toxic connected with it, either wher l eaten raw or when cooked or on cao'
 bage on which the creature had lived
 Efforts to trace every reported case oi
 poisoning in Tennessee resulted In as-
 certaining that they were all without l foundation, no authentic case could be
 cited, and finally he says I am at | loss to understand how such reports | could gain credence and ever be pub 1 lished for facts in the daily press. III
 order. to determine whether the hair
 worm had any poisonous qualities he
 instituted a series of experiments, us-
 ing rabbits, guinea pigs, cats, dogs horses and cows, finding that they
 could all eat the worms. raw or cooked
 with impunity. Extracts from the hair | worms prepared with various solvents
 were also found to be entirely innocu-
 ous, administered internally (psr orem)
 and injected hypodermically.
 Believing that possibly these worms might cause decompositions or fer
 mentation in cabbage, with the produc-
 tion of poisonous substances, the re-
 suit of the decomposition he allowed
 samples of cabbage, both raw and
 cooked, to decompose with the worms
 and then tested the decomposed ma
 teriaI for poisonous properties as
 above, and in no case was any toxic
 substance obtained. Chemical analyses I of the worms and the products of de-
 composition mentioned were made, and
 he was unable to find any ptomaine or
 other isolated substance of toxic na-
 ture."
 As a result the conclusion was
 reached that the cabbage snake is en-
 tirely harmless, and that public rumors
 and superstitions are fallacies without
 seblance of foundation.