SWINE, DISEASE OF. 



773 



German surgeon. During the operation the 

 hared muscles were observed to be abundantly 

 supplied with the characteristic shells or cysts 

 of trichinae. The patient related, in reply to a 

 question whether he had ever been very sick, 

 that in the year 1815, with the other six mem- 

 bers of a commission for the inspection of 

 Bchools, he ate a meal of ham, sausage, cheese, 

 etc., at an inn. All who ate of these provisions 

 eoon after fell sick and died, except the relator 

 himself. Suspicion fell upon the inn-keeper. 

 A judicial investigation was held, but without 

 result precisely as it would be now if we had 

 not that knowledge of the trichinae we possess. 

 And in this case the survivor might have gone 

 to his death and yet nothing have ever been 

 known, in his particular case, of the infestation 

 by trichinae, which had proved fatal to his six 

 .associates, had it not been for the knowledge 

 science had furnished many years after that 

 fatal meal was eaten. 



In June, 1851, in the neighborhood of Ham- 

 burg, several well persons having eaten ham, 

 fell sick. Three of them died, and others were 

 long in a critical state. A judicial investigation 

 was held without satisfaction. Ham poisoning 

 was supposed, but long afterwards it was shown 

 that the symptoms and other circumstances 

 pertaining to the sickness and death of these 

 people, were precisely similar with those sub- 

 sequently ascertained to be trichinae infestation. 



We come now to the occurrence of epidem- 

 ics of this disease. Zenker first observed such 

 an epidemic in and near Dresden, and showed 

 the trichinae found in the ham and sausage 

 made from one particular pig. This pig had 

 been butchered on a farm near Dresden. The 

 butcher and owner of the farm, and other peo- 

 ple, had fallen sick, and a previously perfectly 

 healthy servant-girl had died. In her body an 

 abundance of trichinae were found. With the 

 finding of the trichinae in the muscles of her 

 body, Virchow commenced a series of experi- 

 mental observations. These may be briefly 

 stated. A rabbit fed with trichina-flesh from 

 this girl died in a month, and its flesh was found 

 full of them. Some of this flesh was given to 

 a second rabbit, which also died in a month. 

 With this meat three other rabbits were fed. 

 Two of these died at the end of three weeks, 

 and the third in the fourth week. Lastly, the 

 flesh of these animals dead of trichinae was fed 

 to another rabbit. It ate but very little, yet 

 died at the end of six weeks. In all of these 

 the muscles, after death, were found filled with 

 trichinae, and even hi the smallest particle of 

 the meat several were found. It is to be ob- 

 served that trichinae had never been found in 

 these animals unless they had been previously 

 fed with the trichinae-containing meat. Their 

 living flesh was examined before they were fed, 

 and no trichinae were found in them ; yet a few 

 weeks after they were fed with the meat, the 

 muscles of the same animals were found filled 

 with trichinae. 



In the district of Magdeburg the cases of this 



disease spread over a period of four years. Since 

 the year 1859, a whole series of epidemics 

 of this disease have been observed. They oc- 

 curred at Plauen, Calbe-on-Saale, Quedlinburg, 

 Burg near Magdeburg, Weimar, and Hettstadt 

 near Eislcben, and other places. 



In 1861 a woman was admitted to the Altona 

 hospital with a cancer of the breast of twelve 

 years' standing, which was removed, and, 

 strange to say, on microscopic inspection, 

 found to contain a considerable number of tri- 

 chinae. This led to an inquiry which gave the 

 following information : In 1856 she was resid- 

 ing in the city of Davenport, Iowa, with her 

 brother, and taken suddenly 511 with gastric 

 and rheumatic symptoms, together with oedema 

 and partial paralysis. Convalescence was very 

 protracted, and she never recovered the free use 

 of her fingers at the piano. Her brother was 

 attacked with similar symptoms at the same 

 time, but they were much less severe. After 

 her death at the hospital in 1864, many of the 

 muscles were found to contain encysted trichi- 

 nae, the capsules being very cretaceous. Por- 

 tions of this tissue were given to a cat which 

 was kept in confinement, and after its death, on 

 the sixteenth day, its muscular system was found 

 crowded with free trichinae of various sizes, 

 all within the enlarged tubes of the sarcolem- 

 ma. There seems to be no doubt that this was 

 a case in which the trichinae remained alive 

 seven or eight years, and were capable of re- 

 producing the disease after this long hyberna- 

 tion. Virchow relates another case still more 

 remarkable, where the worms were living after 

 thirteen and a half years, and on being re- 

 moved from their cretaceous prisons, moved ac- 

 tively when placed in the sun, and were found 

 capable of reproduction within the intestinal 

 canal of a rabbit. As to the period at which 

 the capsules are formed within the sarcolem 

 ma, or when the cretaceous formation begins, 

 nothing definite is known. 



The symptoms, progress, and the terrible fatal- 

 ity of the disease, are well exemplified in the 

 history of the Hettstadt tragedy, which is taken 

 from a British medical journal. 



This village is situated near the Hartz Mountains, 

 in Germany. An annual festival was celebrated there 

 some two years since, and one hundred and three 

 persons sat down to a dinner, the third course con- 

 sisting of rostewurste and gemv*e (sausage and vege- 

 tables). The sausage had been prepared beforehand 

 for this special occasion. The steward who had been 

 commissioned to furnish the pig for this purpose, 

 gave the butcher a lean, ill-conditioned one, instead 

 of the thrifty one which had been bargained for. 

 The day after the festival, several persons who had 

 participated in the dinner were attacked with pain 

 and irritation of the intestines, with loss of appetite, 

 fever, and great prostration. The number increased 

 from day to day, and an epidemic of typhus or septic 

 fever was apprehended, as the symptoms began to 

 assume that character. However, as the disease pro- 

 gressed, the symptoms assumed a different tvpe, and 

 to diarrhoea, dysentery, and fever, were added perito- 

 nitis, circumscribed pneumonia, and paralysis of the 

 abdominal and intercostal muscles with those of the 

 neck. Then the typhus theory was abandoned, and 



