FOREWORD 



In this bulletin, Professor Esselen is performing a needed service of much value 

 to the many housewives in Massachusetts who, especially during these wartime 

 days, are actively supplementing their own and the Country's food supply by 

 canning fruits and vegetables for use in their homes. 



The spoilage of canned foods, because of inadequate processing, is misfortune 

 enough; but when there is added the danger of serious illness, and even death, 

 from the eating of spoiled canned food, then misfortune becomes disaster. 



That spoiled food can cause illness is not news to most people. We hear often 

 of illness attributed to "ptomaine poisoning," which competent authorities now 

 know is not caused by ptomaines but by active bacterial infections, or by poisons 

 accumulated in foods by bacterial action. Botulism is the term applied to the 

 illness caused by the most deadly of these bacterial poisons. 



The basic facts about botulism are known to many people; but along the 

 Atlantic seaboard, and particularly in New England, the attitude often taken, 

 unfortunately, is that botulism is something to worry about only in the Rock>r 

 Mountain region and in the Pacific coast area, not in this region. That position 

 is not entirely sound. It is readily granted that the danger is substantially greater 

 in other regions of the country than here; but evidence concerning the distribu- 

 tion in the United States of the bacteria responsible for botulism indicates that 

 no section of the country is entirely free from danger. 



If botulism as a cause of death is compared with typhoid fever, tuberculosis, 

 and many other bacterial diseases, the per-capita average is so small that it can 

 be ignored as a menace to community health. Why, then, should we be con- 

 cerned about it? Professor Esselen answers that question in his text when he 

 states: "We are faced with a disease which, when it does strike, may kill an 

 entire family." The State College is called upon to furnish directions and advice 

 concerning home-canning methods, and its recommendations are received with 

 confidence. For that reason it is vitally important that the advice given should 

 be the best possible on the basis of existing knowledge; and there is no justifica- 

 tion for risking the life of even one member of one family in the Commonwealth. 

 In other words, we must think in terms of the health and safety of each individual 

 rather than of the community as a whole. 



James E. Fuller, 

 Research Professor of Bacteriology. 



