Cassell's dictionary of cookery

deser\'ing of notice, as people in this country are often in the habit of eating cold foreign sausages and uncooked pork relishes liable to contain this deadly parasite. The first notice taken of Trichina spiralis seems to have been in 1822 by Tidemann; it was not, however, des- cribed till 1835, when it received the notice of Owen. From 1835 to 1859 it occupied pretty much the position of a curiosity, and was not regarded as dangerous. But immediately after the latter date a Prussian doctor had no fewer than six patients suftering in one year from trichinatous disease. Fear and interest were at once roused, and the excitement was augmented by the investigation of Zenker, a Prussian medical man of repute, who showed that the migrations of trichina) among human muscles, far from being harmless, as had hitherto been believed, produced symptoms of the most agonising sort, and terminated the existence even of the strong and healthy -within a few weeks after the unfortunate sufferers had par- taken of the contaminated pork. Shortly after this — namely, in October, 1863 — at the little town of Helstadt, in Prussia, on a festive occa- sion, a hundred and thi-ee peoi^le dined together. " Before a month had elapsed, twenty had died of trichinatous disease, eighty were in the excruciating agonies of the fearful malady, while the remainder, not yet attacked, lived in continual terror of the fatal worm. Case after case perished, lingeringly and horribly, as, although most of the leading physicians of the country were consulted, none were able to cure ^ even assuage the pangs of the dying. At first it was suspected that the distemper was the result of intentional poisoning, but microsco- pical investigations of the remains of the feast revealed the cause of all the suffering and death. The damage had been done at the third course of the dinner, consisting of rmteicurst, or smoked sausage meat, which on examination turned out to have been made from an ill- conditioned pig that swarmed with encapsuled woi-ms." Facts such as these should put the public on their guai-d. It is a case for caution, however, and not one for unnecessary alarm, as will be seen from the following abstract of a paper read by Dr. Cobbold before the L:nna3an Society : — " In England ordinary precautions will suffice to prevent the introduction of tri- chinasis. English swine are almost entirely, if not absolutely, free from this disease, and not a single case of trichinasis in the living human subject has been diagnosed in the United King- dom. Some twenty or thirty cases have been discovered post mortem, but it is most probable that all these individuals had contracted the disease by eating German sausage or other pre- paration of foreign meat." In these days, when cheapness in the article of food is too often achieved by the saciificc of purity and care in its selection, no precautions can be un- necessary. Professor Kiihne, of Halle, who was engaged by the Prussian Government in 1865 to investigate the disease, states that "pigs affected with trichina! do not present symptoms sufficiently ob-\aous to be recognised by the breeders. The process of boiling or roasting should be carried on with the greatest care. People should not partake of any meat that has POR ( 614 ) POR not been sufficiently cooked, and should avoid all roast pork which presents traces of blood." Pork, Wholesomeness of.— Pork is a