132 STATE BOARD OF HEALTH. [Jan. 



to eat a rat, or any portion of one ; and I doubt it the more, 

 since raisers rarely or never know of such an occurrence ; 

 whereas, the presence of a small amount of raw lean pork 

 in the oifal — especially if 13 per cent, of all the pork were 

 trichinous — would afford frequent opportunity for one or 

 more hogs to become infected. 



A second consideration of some weight is the probability 

 that, other things being equal, the degree of infection in 

 hogs acquiring trichinae by eating rats would be more uniform 

 and in general more thorough than in hogs infected by eating 

 such fragments of pork as might make their way into 

 kitchen refuse. Not that there would necessarily be any 

 greater uniformity in the degree of infection in the rats 

 themselves than in the pork, but that a larger amount of 

 muscle would be consumed in the former than in the latter 

 case. 



That raw meat should find its way into the city offal is not 



at all surprising, even in view of the general practice of 



reserving for soap whatever may be serviceable as fat. That 



practice, it is certain, must greatly diminish the danger of 



infection from this source, but it cannot be sufficient to 



wholly preclude the admission, especially of fragments of 



lean meat and joints with portions of the muscle still 



attached.* Even a cursory inspection of the contents of 



offal-carts has shown me that uncooked meat finds its way 



into city offal ; but to what extent, it would of course be 



very difficult to ascertain, owing to its heterogeneous nature. 



The raw meat probably does not come from the butchers' 



shops nor from the kitchens of hotels and public restaurants, 



because in these places greater system prevails in the disposal 



of whatever may be made to yield a money return ; it is 



rather from the refuse of private kitchens — where it must 



often be a matter of indifference to the < ' help " whether the 



trimmings from a piece of pork go into the soap-grease or 



the offal-box — that the supply is kept up, — a supply which 



need not be great in amount to insure the results. 



Another fact of some importance is, that nearly half (149 



* It is well known that the portions of a muscle which are most thoroughly in- 

 fected are the ends near their attachment to bone ; so that the fragments of meat 

 remaining on bones are likely to be of nxore thai; average danger. 



