[13] POISONING BY BED CODFISH. 1039 



This opinion appears to ns to be based on an inaccurate interpreta- 

 tion of the facts. We agree that this is only a supposition, but the 

 authoritative character attaching to it from the high standing of the 

 author has caused it to be accepted as true in government circles. The 

 minister reasoned in the following mauuer: Because the red color of 

 the codfish causes and aids its putrid decay, we shall prohibit the sale 

 of red codfish, and thus cause all danger of poisoning to disappear on 

 the well-known principle that when the cause is removed the effect will 

 cease. This mode of reasoning would be correct if the basis on which 

 it rests were sound, but so far the relation supposed to exist between 

 the red color of the codfish and its poisonous putridity has not been 

 sufficiently proved. 



If the opinion of Mr. Bereuger-Feraud is well founded, the degree of 

 poison in the flesh of a codfish should be in the direct ratio of the ex- 

 tent and intensity of the red color. But the very contrary is the case, 

 because in by far the larger number of cases of poisoning by spoiled 

 codfish and in the most serious cases there was no red color. In a 

 second category of facts, it is true, the codfish which had been eaten 

 were red, but we believe to have shown sufficiently that these fish did 

 not produce cases of sickness, because they had this abnormal color, 

 but because they were at the same time spoiled and partly putrid. 



In short, the more or less advanced stage of putrid decomposition of 

 codfish, no matter whether they are red, gray, yellow, or white, is, in 

 our opinion, the sole cause of the poisonous character of their flesh. 



In order to maintain authoritatively, as Mr. Berenger-Feraud has 

 done, that the red color — although inoffensive in itself — favors the putrid 

 decomposition, and should be considered as the first cause of the poison- 

 ous nature of the flesh, it ought to have been proved, in the first place, 

 that all the codfish which produced cases of poisoning were more or 

 less impregnated with the fungus referred to above. But this proof has 

 not been furnished. On the contrary, it has been clearly shown that this 

 cryptogamic vegetation has been observed only on a small number of 

 the codfish which produced cases of sickness ; from whieh we think we 

 can draw the conclusion that the presence of the red color on these fish 

 is simply a coincidence and a sort of unimportant phenomenon. 



Although the red color is found both in sound and spoiled codfish, it 

 is none the less true that, from a commercial point of view, to which we 

 shall soon have occasion to return, codfish which have that color are 

 slightly depreciated in value in our French markets, where whiteness 

 of the flesh is the principal recommendation of a codfish. It seems that 

 this was not always so, for we read in a popular almanac for the year 

 1838 that red codfish was at that time considered the best ; a proof that 

 the popular taste changes in course of time, and that red codfish are 

 not a new thing. In hot countries, especially in the Antilles and in 

 Reunion, consumers even to this day give the preference to red codfish, 

 which they term "saumonee" (salmonified). 



