430 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 9 



meat inspection of meat food products containing pork muscle tissue, 

 if of kinds that are customarily eaten without cooking, and estab- 

 lishment of meat inspection in communities that lack this public 

 service, will help to reduce and ultimately eliminate trichinosis from 

 man. A more comprehensive campaign of education under the aus- 

 I^ices of public health workers and educators on the importance of 

 adequate cooking of pork as a health safeguard will do much to 

 reduce the danger of trichinosis to a minimum. 



Wliile clinical trichinosis in human beingsi in the United States is 

 far from being an alarming problem, it is nevertheless a medical 

 problem that should not be neglected, because trichinosis is a serious, 

 painful, and, sometimes, a fatal disease. The definitely known cases 

 of clinical trichinosis in human beings in this country probably do 

 not exceed 5,000 or 6,000. The more or less recent findings on the 

 incidence of trichinae in over 6,000 human cadavers that were necrop- 

 sied in hospitals in California, the District of Columbia, Massachu- 

 setts, Missouri, Minnesota, New York, and elsew^here (table 2) are 

 of greater interest from zoological and statistical standpoints than 

 from a medical standpoint. These data do show, however, that a 

 strikingly large percentage of the cadavers in question contained 

 varying numbers of trichinae, too small, however, in most instances 

 to have had, or been known to have had, any medical significance. 



It is obvious from these findings that some individuals intention- 

 ally or unwittingly eat pork that has not reached in all of its parts 

 a temperature of 137 °F., which is known to be lethal to trichinae. 

 The need of adequate cooking of pork in the home, in restaurants, 

 and elsewhere should be emphasized by public health physicians, 

 nurses, school teachers, and others engaged in medical and educa- 

 tional work. A well-directed campaign of this sort will be produc- 

 tive of constructive results, particularly if coupled with vigilance on 

 the part of public health officers in the regulation of the operation 

 of garbage-feeding establishments on the outskirts of cities and 

 towns in such a manner as to eliminate feeding of garbage containing 

 scraps of uncooked meat. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 



This paper contains information on the discovery of trichinae 

 in swine and in human beings, the recognition of the pathogenicity 

 of these parasites, their life history, important outbreaks of human 

 trichinosis in Germany due to the consumption of raw pork, the 

 restrictions imposed by various European countries on the importa- 

 tion of pork from the United States, the establishment and abandon- 

 ment in this country of microscopic inspection of pork intended for 

 export to the countries that imposed these restrictions, and data con- 



