Year: 1865

GbratlOn IN Hettstadt,a small country town
near the Hartz Mountains, in GERMANY
Upwards ct hundred persons set down to
an excellent dinner, .and having enjoyed
themselves D,ore mqjOrum, separated and
went to their homes


OF these one hundred and three persons,
mostly men in the prime Of life, eghty-three
are now in their graves the majority Of
the twenty survivors linger with fearful
malady and few only walk apparently
unscathed among the living, but in hourly
fear of an outbreak of the disease which
has carried away such numbers of their fel-
lOw-diners.


They had all eaten Of "a poison at that
festive board, the virulence of which far
surpasses the reported effects Of aqua tophq-
ma, or Of the more tangible agents descrb-
ed in psychological textbooks 1t was not
a poison dug out of the earth, extracted
from plants, or prepared in the laboratory
Of the chemist 1t was not poison ad-
ministered by design or negligence. But
1t was a poison unknown to all concerned :;
and was eaten with the meat in which it
was contained, and of which it formed a
living constituent.


When the festival at Hettstadt had been
finally determined upon, and the dinner had
been ordered at the hotel, the keeper of the
tavern arranged his bill of fare. The in
PRODUCTION Of the third course, it was set
tied, should consist, as usual in those parts
Of the country of ROste,curSt md Gentuse.
The R0steCurSt was, therefore, ordered at
the butchers the necessary number of days
beforehand, in order to allow of its being
properly smoked The butcher, on his part,
went expressly to a neighboring proprietor,
and bought one of two pigs from the stew
ard, who had been commissioned with the;
transaction by his master. 1t appears,
however, that the steward, unfortunately,
sold the pig which the master had not in
tended to sell, as he did not deem it suffi.
emily fat or well-conditioned. Thus the
wrong pig was sold, carried on barrow
to the butcher, killed and worked up into
sausages were duly smoked and delivered
at the hotel. There they were fried and
seved to the guests at the dinner table.


On the day after the festival, several
persons who had participated in the dinner
were attacked with irritation of the intes-
tines, loss of appetite, great prostration
and fever. The number of persons attack





excited in the first instance by the appre-
hension of an impending epidemic of typhus
fever OF continued fever, with which the
symptoms observed showed great similarity.
But when, in some Of the cases treated by
the same physician, the features of the i'll
ness began to indicate at first, acute peri
tOnitis, then pneumonia of a circumscribed
character, next paralysis OF the intercostal
muscles and the muscles in front of the neck.
the hypothesis of septic fever, though sus-
tanned in other cases. had to be abandoned
with respect to these particular Cases.
Some unknown poison was now assumed
to be at the bottom Of the outbreak a; and
an active inquiry into all the circumstances
Of the dinner was instituted. Every article
Of food and material was subjected to a
most rigid examination. without any result
in the first instance. But when the syInp-
toms in some Of the cases invaded the mus
cleS Of the leg, particularly the calves OF
some Of the sufferers, the description which
Xcnker had given of fatal case of trichi-
nous disease was remembered The rem
nants Of sausage, and of pork employed in
its manufacture were examined with the
microscope, and found to he Utterly swarm
ing with encapsuled trichin@ From the
suffering muscles Of several of the victims
small pieces were eXcIsed, and under the
microscope found charged with embryonic
trichinir III all stages of development II
could not be doubted any longer, that as
many of the one hundred and three as had
partaken Of R0&teJcurF had been infested
with trichinous disease by eating OF trichi-
nous pork, the parasites of which had, at
least i'll part, escaped the effects of smoking
and frying.


This awful catastrophe awakened sym
pathy and fear throughout the whole of
Germany Most of the leading physicians
we've consulted in the interest of the suffer
crs, and some visited the neighborhood
where most afflicted patients remained
But none could bring rehet or cure With
an Obstinacy unsurpassed by any other in
fcctious or parasitic disease, trichiniass
carried its victims 10 the grave Many an
thelnlintics were arrayed to destroy, if not
the worms already in the flesh. at least
those yet remaining in the intestinal canal
Picric acid was employed until its use
seemed as dangerous as the disease: ben
zole, which had promised well in expert
mcnts upon animals, was tried, but was un-
availing, As patient after patient died off,
and the dissection of each proved the par
asites to have been quite unaffected by the
agents employed, the conviction was i'm
pressed upon every mind that man aillict-
cd with esh-worm is doomed to die the
slow death OF exhaustion from nervous IL
ritation, fever, and loss of muscular power
in parts of the system essential to cxis-
tence.


But medical science had only Just unrav-
elled a mystery and if it could not save
the victims, it was determined at least to
turn the occasion to the next best account
The cases were therefore observed with care
and chronicled with skill All the multi
farious features of the parasitic diseases
were registered in such manner that there
can hereafter be no difficulty in the diagno-
sis of this disorder A valuable diagnostic
feature was repeatedly observed, namely
the appearance of the fesh-worm under the
thin mucous membrane on the lower side
of the tongue. The natural history of trich
ina in man was found to be the same as
that III animals.


All observations led to the conviction
that the trichina encapsuled in the flesh il
i'll the condition of puberty, Brought into
the stomach, the calcareous capsule is di
gested with the flesh and the trichina il