The communicability to man of diseases from animals used as food / by Henry Behrend.

  • Behrend, Henry, active 1881-1893.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The communicability to man of diseases from animals used as food / by Henry Behrend. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    custom there of eating pork, particularly in the form of sausages, more than half raw. Thus in Berlin, where the inspection of such meat is obligatory, fifteen outbreaks of the malady were officially reported during the year 1878 : and in one of the suburban districts, half of those affected died. The immu- nity of Great Britain from trichinosis is unfortunately a thing of the past, two outbreaks having been recognised during the past decade—one in Wokington in 1871, and a second on board the School-ship Cornwall in 1877, both traceable to the use of pork as food, in one case home-fed, in the second imported from America. The case against meat infected with parasites, of which there are several distinct varieties, is so clearly proved that no object can be gained by discussing it further. With this exception, the animal diseases which are at present, or have been, regarded as transmissible to man through ingested meat are seven in number : viz., (1) cattle-plague, (2) swine typhoid, (3) pleuro-pneumonia, (4) foot and mouth disease, (5) anthracoid diseases, (6) erysipelas, and (7) tubercle. Aa regards the two first, the evidence as to their power of specific infection when taken as food is conflicting. The resemblance they both bear to typhoid fever in their symptoms has caused them to be regarded as the analogue in cattle of this malady ; but their power of communicating this or any other disease to man is doubtful, and may be considered as still siih judice. The sale of such meat is, however, rightly stopped, because, even if incapable of conveying its specific contagion, it is undoubtedly much deteriorated in quality, and its nutritive power much diminished. The evidence against Pleuro-pneumonia is much stronger, as it is a distinctly contagious and febrile disease, tainting the entire body of the animal affected, and warranting its exclusion from the meat market. Yet so inefficient is the working of the legislation upon the subject, that Dr. Carpenter, of Croydon, mentions a recent instance of an outbreak of pleuro-pneumonia in his district, in which it appeared in a farmyard among forty cows, which were all in one shed. The local inspector isolated the first cow, leaving thirty-nine in the shed in which the first case appeared. Of these, twenty-two were seized in about six weeks, one after the other, with the disease, and were taken out of the shed, slaughtered, and buried on the premises; but the rest of the herd were killed by the owner and used as food, though they had been kept the whole time in the infected shed. Yet the Inspector of the Local Government Board had agreed that all proper steps had been taken in this instance to prevent the spread of the infection. Of course, if these cattle had been examined at the market after being slaughtered, as would have been the case if intended for Jewish food, they would all have been condemned as unfit. Dr. Cameron, the Medical Officer of Health for Dublin, has given it as his opinion, confirmed by large experience and abundant evidence, that bad results ensue from the consumption of this class of meat, yet it continues to be sold at a cheap rate as food to the poor. Foot and mouth disease, the fourth on our list, has been defined as a contagious eruptive fever, affecting all warm-blooded animals and attacking man ; and its whole history, during the long period in which it has been prevalent on the Continent and during the last forty years when this country has suffered so much from it, shows that it is indeed a malady of both man and