774 



SWINE, DISEASE OF. 



some unknown poison was assumed to be at the bot- 

 tom of it. Under this conviction, every article of 

 food and material used in connection with the dinner 

 was rigidly examined. By this time the trichinae 

 had reached the muscles of the calf of the leg in 

 some of the victims, and Zenker's description of the 

 disease was called to mind. The remnants of the 

 ausage were examined, and found to be literally 

 "swarming" with trichinae. Portions of muscle 

 from the calf of the leg of the affected ones were ex- 

 amined under the microscope, and were found liter- 

 ally full of free trichinae. These were the progeny 

 of the encapsuled ones which had escaped the smok- 

 ing and frying process to which the sausage had been 

 subjected. 



No less than eighty-three of the above-mentioned 

 number died within a few weeks, and the surviving 

 twenty, at last accounts, were still lingering in agony, 

 and apprehensive of a similar fate. 



This awful catastrophe at Hettstadt awakened sym- 

 pathy and fear throughout all Germany, and many 

 eminent medical men were consulted in the interest 

 of the sufferers, but none could bring relief or cure. 

 With an obstinacy unsurpassed by any other disease, 

 trichiniasis surely carried its victims to the grave. 



Many vermifuges were employed, with the hope 

 of removing the parasites stilt in the alimentary 

 canal. Picric acid was emploved, until its effects 

 seemed as dangerours as the disease itself. An ex- 

 amination of the bodies after death showed the 

 trichinae to have been unaffected by any of the reme- 

 dies employed. The terrible conviction now fastened 

 itself upon the minds of all who witnessed these 

 scenes, that a person afflicted with this parasite was 

 doomed to die the slow death of exhaustion from 

 nervous irritation, fever, and paralysis of all the 

 voluntary muscles. 



Since the Hettstadt tragedy the public mind 

 in Germany has had little rest from apprehen- 

 sion of this terrible scourge. A wholesale 

 poisoning soon after occurred in Offenbach, a 

 manufacturing town in Hesse-Darmstadt. Up- 

 wards of twenty persons were poisoned by eat- 

 ing trichinous pork, several of whom have died. 

 But Hettstadt, with its tragedy and appalling 

 concomitants, is eclipsed* by the late visitation 

 at Hedersleben, another German village, where 

 three hundred inhabitants partook of trichinous 

 pork, and at this writing full one hundred are 

 in their graves. The butcher slaughtered four 

 pigs, which were sold to the villagers. The 

 butcher and his wife, partaking of the same 

 meat, became themselves the earliest victims. 

 A very injudicious custom seems to have ob- 

 tained in this village, as well as in many other 

 parts of Germany, namely : that of eating pork 

 in a raw state, cut fine and spread upon bread. 

 Although the scenes at Hettstadt were still 

 fresh in the public mind, and the very uniform 

 character which the symptoms always present 

 was weh 1 understood by the medical profession 

 generally, yet the people, through fear and ig- 

 norance, fled from what they believed to be a 

 visitation of cholera. The consequences can 

 easily be imagined. Many were seized with the 

 disease, and died on the highways. The irrita- 

 tion of the stomach, vomiting, and diarrhoea, 

 might well be taken for the premonitory symp- 

 toms of the above disease by the mass of the 

 people. Indeed, the village doctor was himself 

 misled, as he treated the sufferers with opium 

 and astringents. This treatment was evidently 



intended to control the diarrhoea ; but it proved 

 fatal to the patients, by confining the parasites 

 in the stomach and alimentary canal until they 

 had an opportunity to pierce through the walls. 

 Out of twenty-eight persons treated in this man- 

 ner, twenty-seven died. One very remarkable 

 fact has been noted in connection with the epi- 

 demic at Hedersleben, namely : that as yet no 

 children have died of the disease, all having 

 made a good recovery. 



We have already seen that one of the Ger- 

 man cases originated in this country, but it is 

 not till recently that we have had any well- 

 authenticated cases of death occurring from the 

 disease in this country, though the encapsuled 

 trichinae have often been found in the muscles 

 after death, by physicians who were conducting 

 autopsies. 



In the " American Medical Times" of Febrn 

 ary 20, 1864, a case is reported by Dr. Schnet 

 ter, in which a whole family was poisoned by 

 eating trichinous pork. The father was the 

 only one in whom the poison proved fatal. 

 This case occurred in New York city. The 

 Buffalo " Medical Journal " contains the account 

 of two fatal cases occurring in the western part 

 of the State. A man and his wife, residing in 

 the village of Checktowaga, Chautauqua County, 

 N. Y., were found to be affected by an " ap- 

 parently acute rheumatism, of a peculiar char- 

 acter." Dr. Krombein, the attending physi- 

 cian, suspected trichinae, and the patients having 

 shortly after died, a microscopic examination was 

 instituted by Drs. Krombein and Homberger, 

 which demonstrated the existence of the para- 

 site in great numbers. The specimens of muscle 

 taken from the bodies of the dead, together 

 with a remnant of the sausages of which they 

 had partaken, were subsequently examined by 

 Dr. J. Lathrop and Professor George Hadley, 

 under the microscope, and trichinua found in 

 both. In the human muscle they were free; in 

 the sausage, encysted. Other members of the 

 family were affected, but probably did not eat 

 enough to prove fatal. 



Dr. Dingier reports two cases in Marietta, 

 Ohio, and Dr. Herman Keifer, of Detroit, Michi- 

 gan, gives in the " Detroit Medical Review " a 

 very marked case in a young German woman, 

 twenty-one years of age, which proved fatal 

 about four weeks from the first attack. It is 

 by no means impossible that the mysterious dis- 

 ease at Willard's Hotel, Washington, may have 

 arisen from this cause. 



The cumber of swine affected by this disease 

 is probably very small. In Brunswick, Ger- 

 many, out of twenty thousand swine examined, 

 but two were found to be trichinous ; but as we 

 have seen, the flesh of a single hog affected by 

 this disease has caused the death of one hun- 

 dred persons. A recent examination made by 

 a committee of the Scientific Academy of Chi- 

 cago of swine slaughtered in that city, devel- 

 oped the fact that out of 1,894 animals ex- 

 amined; encysted trichinae were found in 

 twenty-eight, or nearly two per cent, of the 



