FOOD POISONING. 47 



FOOD POISONmO. 



By victor C. VACGHAN, 

 professor of hygiene in the university of michigan. 



"TTTITHIN the past fifteen or twenty years cases of poisoning 

 V V with foods of various kinds have apparently become quite 

 numerous. This increase in the number of instances of this kind 

 has been both apparent and real. In the first place, it is only 

 within recent years that it has been recognized that foods ordi- 

 narily harmless may become most powerful poisons. In the sec- 

 ond place, the more extensive use of preserved foods of various 

 kinds has led to an actual increase in the number of outbreaks of 

 food poisoning. 



The harmful effects of foods may be due to any of the follow- 

 ing causes: 



1. Certain poisonous fungi may infect grains. This is the 

 cause of epidemics of poisoning with ergotized bread, which for- 

 merly prevailed during certain seasons throughout the greater part 

 of continental Europe, but which are now practically limited to 

 southern Russia and Spain. In this country ergotism is practi- 

 cally unknown, except as a result of the criminal use of the drug 

 ergot. However, a few herds of cattle in Kansas and Nebraska 

 have been quite extensively affected with this disease. 



2. Plants and animals may feed upon substances that are not 

 harmful to them, but which may seriously affect man on account 

 of his greater susceptibility. It is a well-known fact that hogs 

 may eat large quantities of arsenic or antimony without harm to 

 themselves, and thus render their flesh unfit for food for man. It 

 is believed that birds that feed upon the mountain laurel furnish 

 a food poisonous to man. 



3. During periods of the physiological activity of certain 

 glands in some of the lower animals the flesh becomes harmful 

 to man. Some species of flsh are poisonous during the spawning 

 season. 



4. Both animal and vegetable foods may become infected with 

 the specific germs of disease and serve as the carriers of the infec- 

 tion to man. Instances of the distribution of typhoid fever by the 

 milkman are illustrations of this. 



5. Animals may be infected with specific diseases, which may 

 be transmitted to man in the meat or milk. This is one of the 

 means by which tuberculosis is spread. 



6. Certain nonspecific, poison-producing germs may find their 

 way into foods of various kinds, and may by their growth produce 



