318 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



bj* stings of these apparently insignificant insects. Occasionally these stings produced 

 a bright-red mottled rash, just like the rash which follows upon eating bad "fish," 

 especially shellfish, above all periwinkles and mussels, more or less "on the go" or 

 tainted, which bring many cases of suspected poisoning to the local medical man, who 

 generally cures his patients with a prompt emetic and purge. 



While bees are vegetarians, wasps are filth-feeders, greedily devouring dirt and 

 decomposed animal matter. Hence it is probable that fatal cases resulting from was]) 

 stings are caused, not by the acrid and the specific secretions of the wasp, but are due 

 to the infuriated insect inoculating accidentally a very minute dose of putrid poison. 



In Exodus xxiii, 27, 28, Deuteronomy vn, 20, and Joshua xxiv, 12, we read of 

 hornets being sent to drive out and destroy enemies. 



From time immemorial in Eastern countries the sting of the wasp or hornet was 

 considered as venomous and deadly as oriental leprosy. 



The Talmud declares that the lion fears the mosquito, the elephant the gnat, and 

 the scorpion the ichneumon fly. 



Without suffering from their stings, wasps are devoured by toads. 



The importance of the question of putrid food will be readily appreciated when it 

 is recollected that quite recently a well-known London modern medical writer has 

 boldly stated that " though you may eat and drink cholera, you can not possibly 

 catch it." Personally I believe that cholera is infectious, but that bad food and 

 water may also communicate the disease. 



In 1848 Prof. Virchow showed that the symptoms and anatomical changes caused 

 by injecting putrefying fluids into the blood of animals most closely resembled cholera. 



Ancient physicians wisely assumed that there were both a status ptitridus and 

 a febris putridus in foul fevers, and that all these infectious diseases contained a 

 common putrid element. 



DOMESTIC ANIMALS POISONED BY BAD FISH. 



Especially at the seaside, or near fish shops and fish markets, dogs are particularly 

 liable to putrefactive poisoning and choleraic conditions, more frequently originating 

 by their having eaten bad fish than from any other kinds of decomposed animal or 

 vegetable matter. Because of their so readily vomiting unhealthy food, though prover- 

 bially fond of fish, cats suffer much less than dogs. From time immemorial, in some 

 oriental countries, at certain seasons, when fish is suspected to be specially poisonous, 

 the natives feed suitable domestic animals on the fish, when, if no bad symptoms occur 

 in the animals experimented upon, the people eat the fish. 



In man, but for the fact that '-fresh and cured" fish (i. e., aquatic and amphibian 

 animals and their products used as food) produce in many cases immediate vomiting 

 and diarrhoea, fish-poisoning would be practically universal. There are numerous 

 diseases directly attributable to eating bad fish or neglecting to destroy its offal. I 

 may mention, for instance, that domestic animals act as hosts to parasites, which 

 attack some races of Northern Europe and Asia. The eggs of the parasites are 

 propagated; these may dry and get distributed; or else dogs eat them and then pass 

 them, thereby often contaminating local drinking-water supplies, etc. Tape-worms, 

 and various other worms infecting man, hydatids, etc., are thus frequently introduced, 

 especially when men and animals drink out of the same vessels. 



