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Fahrenheit. We' cannot insist too strongly upon this point. Again, by properly 

 salting and smoking the meat for a period of at least ten days, the trichinae, 

 should they exist, will be certainly killed. Simple desiccation of the meat, if 

 continued for a period of sufficient length, will also kill them. They will never 

 be found alive in old hams, for instance. On the other hand, mere pickling 

 appears to have very little effect upon these worms. 



Trichinae have doubtless always existed in muscles of the hog, although pro- 

 bably not to the same extent as at present. And trichiniasis in man may have 

 existed to a considerable extent in this country before its nature and cause be- 

 came known. Some of the members of your committee can recall cases of ob- 

 scure disease which have come to their knowledge in past years, which may have 

 been owing to the presence of trichinse. 



THE TRICHINAE PANIC. 



Having now fully exposed the exact extent of the danger from trichinous 

 pork to Avhich our people are liable, and stated the means of avoiding it, we 

 ■will proceed to close our report with a few remarks upon the economical aspects 

 of the subject. A panic has been produced in the mind of our public by the 

 news which has reached us from Germany ccmcerning the disasters which have 

 occasionally followed the consumption of pork in a raw state. The excitement 

 has, with little doubt, been fostered by interested persons for speculative pur- 

 poses, until people have come to imagine that there is danger in eating pork of 

 any kind — a danger all the more terrible because hidden, little understood, and 

 undiscoverable by ordinary means. All this excitement has occurred before a 

 single instance of the occurrence of trichince in American hogs has been, as far 

 as we are aware, authentically reported. It has, therefore, become necessary 

 that the subject should be thoroughly investigated, in order that the people, by 

 familiarity with the danger, and confidence in their understanding of its charac- 

 ter, may not be the prey of superstitious fears. The panic which now prevails 

 is unfounded in reason, senseless and greatly ivjurious. We do not allude to 

 the commercial aspects of the question, a matter of small moment compared 

 with the great importance of pork, as the kind of meat diet upon which nine- 

 tenths of our agricultural population, north and south, mainly depend. In our 

 view it would be f jUy to discard this kind of meat from our list of articles of 

 food when all possibility of injury attending its use may be avoided by the 

 most simple means. Let the people but understand that only one hog in forty- 

 eight contains trichinaj at all ; that only one in three hundred contains them in 

 sufficient numbers to cause considerable danger ; and that even in these cases 

 the worms are rendered innocuous by proper smoking, drying, or cooking, and 

 we imagine that few sensible persons will refuse pork as food if it suits their 

 convenience to use it. 



E. ANDREWS, M. D. 



J. V. Z. BLANEY, M. D. 



HOSMER A. JOHNSON, M. D. 



WILLIAM STIMPSON, M. D., 



Secretary. 



THE PRESERVATION OF TIMBER. 



Every farmer has always lamented the fact that a great part of his labor is 

 necessarily given to keeping his fences from dilapidation. It is this unprofitable 

 work that makes agriculture a less lucrative pursuit than other occupations. 

 Posts and rails decay almost as fast as the profits of the farm will permit their 



