172 PARASITES OF MAN 



It is immediately related to the irrigation of fields with 

 sewage/ The editor, of course, made this statement on 

 independent grounds, and on his own responsibility. If 

 he had said the subject bears an indirect relation to the 

 sewage question, he would have said no more than is abso- 

 lutely true, for, as I shall take occasion to explain, there is 

 every reason to suppose that certain forms of parasitic disease 

 may be propagated by means of sewage. In this connection 

 some of you may be disposed to ask the question : f Are there 

 any sources of comfort to be gathered from the facts V Or 

 you may say, supposing that in future our British swine are not 

 as free from Trichinae as they have been hitherto, can we possibly 

 avoid the contingency of playing the part of host to those crea- 

 tures ? Certainly, I reply, it is simply a question of properly cook- 

 ing the food. If these farmers have not cooked their food at all, 

 or scarcely at all, that will at once account for their being laid up. 

 I should tell you that the lady and the daughter are recovering, 

 and that they are convalescent, but the man-servant is very ill. 

 If, during cooking, the flesh consumed by these persons had 

 been raised to a persistent temperature of 170 Fahr., then, 

 doubtless, the ingestion of trichinised pork would have done 

 no harm. You observe that Dr Dickinson says in his letter 

 that they partook of it roasted and boiled. Now, few of us are 

 in the habit of eating underdone pork, although there are other 

 meats that we devour very readily in an imperfectly cooked 

 state. It must be remembered, also, that although the exterior 

 may have been subjected to a temperature of 212 degrees, it by 

 no means follows that the whole of the joint throughout must 

 have been submitted to that temperature. Under rapid cooking, 

 the centre of a large joint may remain much below even 140 

 degrees. If the man-servant ate only one ounce of the flesh 

 with living Trichinae in it, he will probably have at this present 

 moment at least 42,000,000 of these guests in his muscles. 

 You will ask, ' Will he recover ?' ' Yes ; if he ate no more than 

 that/ If he has eaten 2 oz. thoroughly underdone, depend 

 upon it he has 80,000,000, and if he has eaten 3 oz. he will have 

 over 100,000,000 of Trichinae in his muscles. Could he survive 

 if he had eaten over 3 oz., and thus have 100,000,000 and 

 upwards of these inhabitants ? I think he could. We have 

 evidence on this point from the case in which I estimated that 

 there were upwards of 100,000,000 of Trichinae present, and yet 

 the man survived the attack. 



