42 



NATURE 



[September 9, 1920 



which, apart from the group of diseases due to 

 Gartner's bacillus and its allies, is dealt with 

 briefly as not falling- within the proper scope of 

 the book. In discussing food as a passive vehicle 

 of infection. Dr. Savage gives a very useful sum- 

 mary of experimental work on the temperatures 

 reached in ordinary cooking. Many readers will 

 be surprised to learn how inadequate ordinary 

 boiling and baking are to destroy bacteria in the 

 deeper parts of a large joint of meat, and how 

 little reliance can be placed on cooking as a safe- 

 guard against infection. Foods inherently poison- 

 ous are the subject of the next chapter : poisonous 

 fish scarcely occur in this country, but an adequate 

 account is given of the effects produced by certain 

 fungi, and of ergotism and lathyrism. Food 

 idiosyncrasy is then discussed : the writer accepts 

 the view, now usually held, that this is a question 

 of anaphylaxis. Certain persons may be so ab- 

 normally sensitive to a particular foreign protein 

 as to react against it, with symptoms recalling 

 those of anaphylactic shock, even when it is taken 

 by the mouth — a view which presupposes that 

 some minimal amount escapes digestion and 

 reaches the blood unchanged. The commonest 

 protein against which such hypersensitiveness is 

 exhibited appears to be white of &%^, but even 

 milk may be thus poisonous to certain individuals. 

 The largest section of the book is naturally 

 devoted by the author to those outbreaks of acute 

 gastro-enteritis so commonly described in the 

 newspapers as "ptomaine poisoning," but which 

 are now well known to be instances of infection 

 with some member of the Salmonella group of 

 bacilli. Here Dr. Savage is on his own ground ; 

 his report to the Local Government Board on this 

 subject in 1913 is well known. The symptoms, 

 mode of causation, pathology, and bacteriology 

 are fully discussed, and a table is given of 112 

 outbreaks in this country, with the chief known 

 data concerning each. (It is a pity, by the way, 

 that Dr. Savage persistently uses "data" as a 

 singular instead of as a plural word.) The 

 bacteriology of the Salmonella group is an 

 extremely interesting, but a very difficult, subject. 

 We do not know whether the different food- 

 poisoning bacteria are mere races of one type, or 

 deserve the rank of separate species; it is a must 

 puzzling thing that a single organism should be 

 the cause of paratyphoid fever as a rule, and yet at 

 times produce a gastro-enteritis which is clinically 

 a quite different disease. Into this thorny ques- 

 tion Dr. Savage scarcely enters, though he gives 

 an excellent account of the known facts as re- 

 gards both human and animal infections, together 

 with a full and useful bibliography of the 

 "Gartner group." It is unfortunate that in 

 NO. 2654, VOL. 106] 



many outbreaks of food-poisoning the bacterio- 

 logical examination has been so insufficient that 

 no certain facts can be gleaned, but the full in- 

 structions given in these pages should enable any 

 bacteriologist to carry out an investigation on 

 adequate lines. 



Other forms of bacterial food-poisoning receive 

 full discussion, but the weight of evidence seems 

 against their importance, if not against their exist- 

 ence. Botulism, of course, is a well-known con- 

 dition on the Continent and in America, and re- 

 ceives a chapter to itself. Special types of food- 

 poisoning, such as those due to mussels, cheese, 

 and potatoes, are also dealt with in a separate 

 chapter, and seem to be chemical in their origin. 



In a discussion on putrefaction an excellent 

 popular account is given of the chemical and bac- 

 teriological aspects of that process, and Dr. 

 Savage has no difficulty in laying the bogey of 

 ptomaine poisoning. This hypothesis dates from 

 a time before the rise of modern bacteriology ; 

 ptomaines are unquestionably formed during 

 putrefaction, but their toxicity has been exagger- 

 ated, and they are present in any quantity only 

 "when the food is far too nasty to eat." 



Chemical poisons in food, unintentionally intro- 

 duced, are dealt with under two headings — that 

 in which they are introduced in processes of manu- 

 facture, and that in which they arise from the 

 chemical action of the food upon the tins or other 

 vessels in which it is put up ; a further group is 

 formed by the preservatives used to prevent second- 

 ary bacterial action. These subjects are treated in 

 adequate detail, and in conclusion there is a 

 chapter on the prevention of food-poisoning. The 

 book is compact, well printed, and adequately 

 indexed, and should be of signal service to the 

 medical profession and to all engaged in public 

 health work, while it is a mine of information to 

 the bacteriologist, and so clearly written as to 

 be of no small interest to the general reader. 



Malaria at Home and Abroad. 

 Malaria at Home and Abroad. By Lt.-Col. S. P. 

 James. Pp. xi-l-234. (London: John Bale, 

 Sons, and Danielsson, Ltd., 1920.) Price 

 25s. net. 



COL. JAMES'S book appears at an opportune 

 time, when malaria, owing to the Great 

 War and the return of soldiers from highly 

 malarious countries, has acquired a much wider 

 distribution than before. How wide that dis- 

 tribution is at the present time is seen on the map 

 of the world in the frontispiece, and how it 

 affected England in 1919 is shown on map 59, 

 p. 90. It appears that since March i, 1919, when 



