280 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 



States iuto all the Frencli territory. The 4,611 kilograms which appear iu the year 

 1882 came from a stock taken from the warehouses December :31, 1882. The 52,396 

 kilograms of 188:3 were iutroduced after the promulgation of the decree of November 

 27, 1883, which removed the interdiction. 



The same gentleman presented the following table, which shows the 

 number of live hogs imported into France iu the years 1877 and 1882, 

 and the countries from which they came : 



Countries. 



1882. 



Germany ] 15, 983 



Belgium 57,806 



Spam 4,234 



Italy i 66,366 



Switzerland •■ 964 



other countries 941 



16, 165 



68, 716 



2,204 



9,567 



1,586 



913 



Total 146,294 99,148 



\ L^ 



In this connection he remarked, " It is then, to-day, Belgium and 

 Germany which furnish us the greatest number of living hogs. Is it not 

 from this direction that there is reason to fear the invasion of trichinae 

 and trichiuiasis?"* 



TEICHINIASIS IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 



The number of cases of trichiuiasis occurring among peojjle in the 

 United States is actually very small. The records of these have not 

 been brought together in a thorough manner, but, as far as we have been 

 able to ascertain, the disease has never occurred iu more than three or 

 four localities iu a single year, and during the last twenty years there 

 does not appear to have been more than thirty different outbreaks. In 

 none of these outbreaks have a sufficient number of peo])le been attacked 

 to allow of the term epidemic being applied to them in any proper sense 

 of the word. Usually but two to four people have been affected at a 

 time, and never, so far as we have been able to learn, more than ten. All 

 have resulted from eating raw or very imperfectly cooked meat, and in 

 very few of the instances had the pork undergone any i^reliminary curing. 

 Some of the cases reported as trichiuiasis were never demonstrated to 

 be this disease, but seem to have been the result of poisoning by meat 

 which had been preserved without sufficient salting until it had under- 

 gone partial decomposition. It has long been known that extremely 

 virulent poisons are produced during putrefaction of flesh, and the 

 effects of these have been observed so often in Germany when sausages 

 were eaten that they have received the special name of ivurstgift or 

 sausage poison. This does not seem to be understood by many Ameri- 

 can physicians, and so nearly every case of sickness arising from the 

 consumption of the raw or imperfectly cooked flesh of hogs in the vari- 

 ous forms in which it is preserved is reported as trichiuiasis. So that 

 while it may be true that some cases have not been reported or brought 



* Bulletin de l'Acad6mie de M6decine, 1884, pp. 189-211. 



