130 BACTERIOLOGY OF MEAT AND MEAT PRODUCTS 



poisoning. In consequence it came to be believed that food 

 poisoning outbreaks were to be explained as due to the ingestion 

 of food in the early stages of putrefaction, the symptoms being 

 caused by the presence of ptomaines, hence the popular name of 

 ptomaine poisoning for these cases and outbreaks. 



Later investigations have shown that whether or no putre- 

 factive bacilli and their toxins play any part, basic nitrogenous 

 bodies of the nature of ptomaines certainly do not, and the term 

 " ptomaine poisoning " should be abandoned as incorrect and 

 misleading. 



Most writers, however, still maintain that incipient putre- 

 faction, due to the products of B. proteus and other putrefactive 

 bacilli, is a cause of food poisoning. While this may be true 

 for some individual cases, in the writer's opinion the role of the 

 putrefactive bacteria in food poisoning outbreaks is an extremely 

 small one and does not extend to the causation of extensive 

 outbreaks. 



In this connection the greatest burden of suspicion has fallen 

 upon the Proteus group and to a lesser extent on the different 

 varieties of theJ?. colt group, but other bacilli have been suspected 

 in individual outbreaks. 



B. botulinus. 



This bacillus is the cause of a group of cases of /ood 

 poisoning, now fortunately very rare, included under the term 

 botulism and which in their symptomatology are quite different 

 from the ordinary outbreaks of food poisoning. In these cases 

 the symptoms are almost entirely referable to lesions of the 

 central nervous system. Most of the outbreaks have occurred 

 in Wiirtemberg and other parts of South Germany and have 

 been due to eating raw sausages, the condition being frequently 

 spoken of as sausage poisoning. 



The symptoms in these cases are due to B. botulinus, a 

 bacillus isolated by Van Ermengen in 1895 from a poisonous 

 ham. A large (4 6 /u) bacillus, with terminal spores. An 

 obligate anaerobe. Feebly motile with 4 to 8 flagella. Stains 

 by Gram's method. Culturally it slowly liquefies gelatine, fer- 

 ments glucose with gas formation but not lactose or saccharose, 



