Dr. G.S. Buchanan's report to the Local Government Board on an outbreak of illness at Mansfield caused by eating potted meat / [G.S. Buchanan].

  • Buchanan, George Seaton, Sir, 1869-1936.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. G.S. Buchanan's report to the Local Government Board on an outbreak of illness at Mansfield caused by eating potted meat / [G.S. Buchanan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    made of stone flags, slopes towards the door. The waste waters of the slaughtering and dressing run beneath the door to a gutter outside, which conveys these liquids along an open yard to a trapped gully, and so to the sewer. There is no drain opening within the room itself. The mincing machine (which was fairly clean when I saw it) stands in one corner of the room. Alongside it is the sausage machine, and then comes a dresser used for preparing meat. On the opposite side of the room are the iron boilers already mentioned. Each is bricked round, and has its own furnace beneath. At the far end of the room is a pen for keeping pigs until they are slaughtered. The salting room leads out of the preparing room. Both preparing room and salting room buildings are old, and on one side they face a house now unoccupied and ruinous. Between these rooms and the ruined house is a passage two or three feet wide, filled with old rubbish and debris. No refuse, I ascertained, had recently been put into this passage, which is, indeed, difficult to get at, and leads nowhere. AS TO THE SOURCE OF THE DELETERIOUS AGENT IN THE POTTED MEAT. The potted meat had clearly become capable of causing illness while it was on Mr. X*s. premises. And apparently this had taken place after the cooking. The bullocks, which, according to Mr. X.’s account, had supplied all the beef in the potted meat, had been sold to Mr. X. in the cattle market by a dealer, who liai just bought them, I was told, in order to re-sell. I could not find this dealer, and thus was unable to trace the previous history of the bullocks. But on February 10th, and for a week prior to that date, beef from these two carcases had beeD sold to various persons. I could learn of no ill effects among those who had eaten it. The pigs which supplied the hocks which were added to the preparation afforded material for the brawn made at the same time, and also, later in the week, for pork pies. Both brawn and pork pies had been extensively sold, but had done no harm. That the deleterious agent was introduced into the potted meat after it had been cooked is further indicated by the fact that the gravy obtained from the cooking of the beef and pork was straightway added to pork pies; these pies being subsequently eaten by many persons, always with impunity. If thus became necessary to seek for a deleterious agent superadded to the potted meat somewhere in the interval between the time when the cooking was completed on February 11th, and the time when this meat was first turned out of the shallow tins in the salting room on the following day. But I could not determine at what stage of this interval such addition occurred, or in what way it had taken place. Attention wras first directed to the shallow tins in which the potted meat had been stored. Did these tins already contain the deleterious agent when the potted meat was put into them? If this had been so, this agent must needs have been already present in each of several separate tins before the potted meat was added. For the contents of everyone of the tins had been poisonous. But although, as I have said, certain empty potted meat tins shown to me appeared to be kept in an uncleanly condition, I could obtain no indication of a general contamination of all the tins which had been used on this occasion. Next, had these several tins been contaminated after the potted meat had been put in them ? All the tins, as soon as filled, lay for a time on the dresser in the preparing room. I had no information in any wray suggesting that a deleterious agent had there gained access to them. And the brawn and other materials standing on the dresser at the same time did not prove deleterious. The tins had next been taken from the preparing room to the shelf in the salting room adjoining. Over the salting room is a loft in which sawdust is stored. An aperture in the wall above the shelf opens to a staircase leading to the loft, and through this aperture sawdust or other matters taken up or down the staircase might easily have been scattered over the tins of potted meat on the shelf. But I could not learn of any newly obtained sawdust or of other dusty material that had been taken up or down the staircase about February 11th- Moreover, if contamination had occurred in