398 BACTERIA AND FOOD-POISONING 



the use of very small portions. With some of those affected the 

 symptoms were very severe, but there were no deaths. Bacilli of 

 the Bacillus entcritidis type were isolated from the meat. 



"A large and unusually severe outbreak reported by McWeeney 

 occurred in November, 1908, among the inmates of an industrial 

 school for girls at Limerick, Ireland. There were 73 cases with 

 9 deaths out of the total number of 197 pupils. The brunt of the 

 attack fell on the first or Senior class comprising 67 girls between 

 the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Out of 55 girls belonging to this 

 class who partook of beef stew for dinner 53 sickened, and 8 of these 

 died. One of the two who were not affected ate the gravy and 

 potatoes but not the beef. Some of the implicated beef was also 

 eaten as cold meat by girls in some of the other classes, and also 

 caused illness. Part of the meat had been eaten previously without 

 producing any ill effects. 'The escape of those who partook of 

 portions of the same carcass on October 27 and 29 (five days earlier) 

 may be accounted for either by unequal distribution of the virus or 

 by thorough cooking which destroyed it. Some of the infective ma- 

 terial must, however, have escaped the roasting of the 29th, and 

 multiplying rapidly, have rendered the whole piece intensely toxic 

 and infective during the five days that elapsed before the fatal Tues- 

 day when it was finally consumed.' The animal from which the fore- 

 quarter of the beef was taken had been privately slaughtered by a local 

 butcher. No reliable information could be obtained about the 

 condition of the calf at, or slightly prior to, slaughter. The meat, 

 however, was sold at so low a price that it was evidently not regarded 

 as of prime quality. In this outbreak the agglutination reactions 

 of the blood of the patients and the characteristics of the bacilli 

 isolated showed the infection to be due to a typical strain of Bacillus 

 enteritidis." 



Offending Foods. Meat is so often the cause of poisoning that 

 the terms "meat-poisoning" and food-poisoning" have come to 

 be used almost synonymously. Of meats, chicken and pork are 

 more likely to cause poisoning than are meats from other animals, 

 while the internal organs liver and kidney are more likely to 

 contain disease-producing bacteria than are the muscular tissues. 

 Sausages, hamburger steaks, meat pies, puddings, and jellies are 

 especially likely to cause food-poisoning. This is probably due to 

 the products from which they are made, the methods of treating, and 

 the fact that the heat used in cooking such foods is not sufficient to 

 kill the bacteria in the food. While there are a few cases on record 

 where individuals have been poisoned by the eating of freshly well- 

 cooked meats they are so rare as to be of little importance: so the 

 thorough cooking of meat greatly diminishes the likelihood of 

 trouble. 



