PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY. OF GENEVA. 203 



3. Observations on tlic contents of the digestive canal in tlie foetus of the 

 vertebrates, ( Bihliutltcque Uniccrsclle, vol. XXIX. J 



Lastly, he published alone in the Bibliot/icque Univcrsclle, vol. XXVI, a 

 memoir on the active principle contained in the "purple digitalis." 



Having become a valetudinarian in 1850, in consequence of rheumatic affec- 

 tions, Le Royer was struck, in 18G0, with cerebral apoplexy, which kept him 

 riveted to his chair till the moment of his death, a few weeks siuce, without any 

 notable abatement of his intellectual faculties. 



APPENDIX ON THE TKICHINIASIS. 



We annex the following additional information in respect to Trichiniasis, 

 mentioned in the preceding article : 



A few months ago there was a festive celebration in Hettstadt, a small coun- 

 try town near the Hartz Mountains, in Germany. Upwards of a hundred per- 

 sons set down to an excellent dinner, and having enjoyed themselves more 

 majorvin, separated, and went to their homes. 



Of these one hundred and tln-ee persons, mostly men in the prime of life, 

 eighty-three are now in their graves ; the majorit}'^ of the twenty survivors lin- 

 ger with a fearful malady ; and a few only walk apparently unscathed among 

 the living, but in hourly fear of an outbreak of the disease which has carried 

 away such numbers of their fellow-diners. 



I'hey had all eaten of a poison at that festive board, the virulence of which 

 far surpasses the reported effects of aqua toj^luma, or of the more tangible 

 agents described in toxicological text-books. It was not a poison dug out of 

 the earth, extracted from plants, or prepared in the laboratory of the chemist. 

 It was not a poison administered by design or negligence. But it was a poison 

 unknown to all concerned ; and was eaten with the meat in which it was con- 

 tained, and of which it formed a living constituent. 



When the festival at Hettstadt had been finally determined upon, and the 

 dinner had been ordered at the hotel, the keeper of the tavern arranged his bill 

 of fare. The introduction of the third course, it was settled, should consist, as 

 usual in those parts of the country, of Rosfeicur.'it tind Gemma. The Roste- 

 wurst was, therefore, ordered at the butcher's the necessary number of days 

 beforehand, in order to allow of its being properly smoked. The butcher, ou 

 his part, went expressly to a neighboring ])roprietor, and bought one of two 

 pigs from the steward, Avho had been commissioned with the transaction by his 

 master. It appears, howev(!r, that the steward, unfortunately, sold the pig 

 which the master had not intended to sell, as he did not deem it sufficiently iat 

 or well-conditioned. Tlius the wrpng pig was sold, carried on a barrow to the 

 butcher, killed and worked up into sausages. The sausages were duly smoked 

 and delivered at the hotel. There they were fried and served to the guests at 

 the dinner table. 



On the day after the festival, several persons who had participated in the 

 dinner were attacked with irritation of the intestines, loss of appetite, great 

 prostration and fever. The number of persons attacked rapidly increased ; and 

 great alarm was excited in the first instance by the appreliension of an impend- 

 ing epidemic of typhus fever or continued fever, with which the symptoms ob- 

 served showed great similarity. But when, in some of the cases treated by the 

 same physician, the features of the illness began to indicate at first, acute peri- 

 tonitis, then pneumonia of a circumscribed character, next paralysis of the inter- 

 costal muscles and the muscles in front of the neck, the hypothesis of septic 

 fever, though sustained in other cases, had to be abandoned with respect to these 

 particular cases. Some unknown poison was now assumed to be at the bottom 



