GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND SUMMARY. 137 



they think has been a disinfecting process, cholera, yel- 

 low fever, scarlet fever, or some disease of that kind will 

 break out again, often with more virulence than before. 



If meat that has been hung a few days in unfavorable 

 weather, until an odor of fermentation can be discovered, 

 be placed under the microscope, microbes may be detected 

 producing fermentation and putrefaction ; and thus the 

 nose becomes an organ to warn its owner against a dan- 

 ger which the eyes fail to discover. I have no doubt that 

 considerable sickness is caused by the recent custom of 

 eating meat improperly cooked. Doctors sometimes 

 order their patients to eat raw meat and to drink fresh 

 blood. In these instances the patients take nourishment 

 into the system, and they also take the germs of disease. 

 We all know the terrible effects produced by trichinae 

 that infest raw pork ; how, when taken into the stom- 

 ach, they soon develop throughout the whole system, 

 and the victim soon dies in indescribable torture. Per- 

 sons who take raw meat, or eat underdone meat, are 

 liable to a similar evil, if in a less degree. Microbes are 

 not killed except by a very high degree of heat — a degree 

 much higher than that which enters into the substance 

 of meat that is insufficiently cooked. 



A temperature of 212° will, as I have stated already, 

 suffice to destroy many germs, but there are some that 

 survive a higher degree of heat unless it is continued for 

 a considerable time. Epidemics are certainly conveyed 

 in milk, but wherever the milk is carefully and suffi- 

 ciently boiled no disease is ever induced by it. A case 

 is on record where a number of persons were seized with 

 a severe attack of choleraic diarrhoea after partaking 

 of a boiled ham at a public lunch. It was proved that 

 the meat contained numbers of spore-bearing microbes, 

 which are always difficult to kill, and that it had been 

 insufficiently cooked. In another instance similar re- 

 sults followed after a number of persons had eaten of 

 well-cooked pork. But in that case the micro-organisms 

 had taken their origin in the food after it had been 

 cooked — a fact which again conveyed a useful lesson. 



