176 



THE AMERICAN MONTHLY 



[September, 



terial growth, although this is not so 

 stated in the abstract before us. It is 

 said, however, that • old, foul-smell- 

 ing cheese, such as Limburger and 

 Schweitzer, have not been known to 

 be poisonous.' Usually it is home- 

 made cheese and cottage cheese that 

 becomes poisonous, although some- 

 times it is cheese made in large fac- 

 tories. Such cheese instantlv turns 

 litmus paper red. 



As regards the poison Dr. Vaughn 

 says :— ^ 



' It is a product of slight putrefac- 

 tion in the cheese, which probably 

 occurs in the vat, as the curd has been 

 known to poison a person. By this 

 slight putrefaction, or excessive fer- 

 mentation, as it may be called, a large 

 amount of butyric acid is formed, and 

 this, in the presence of the casein of 

 the cheese, is capable of developing a 

 poison. The poison was obtained in 

 long needle-shaped crystals, which 

 are freely soluble in water, chloro- 

 form, alcohol, and ether. The small- 

 est visible fragment of a crystal placed 

 upon the end of the tongue causes a 

 sharp, stinging pain at the point of ap- 

 plication, and, in a few minutes, dry- 

 ness and constriction of the throat. 

 A slightly larger amount produced 

 nausea, vomiting, and diarrhcea. 

 The poison is volatile at the tempera- 

 ture of boiling water, and for this 

 reason even poisonous cheese may 

 be eaten with impunity after being 

 cooked.' 



Poisonous Dried Beef. — It ap- 

 pears from the following highly intel- 

 ligible pai'agraphs from the Evening 

 Post of New York that somebody 

 out West has been poisoned by eat- 

 ing dried beef. It also appears that 

 two physicians, one of them a mem- 

 ber of the State Board of Health of 

 Illinois (which, by the way, we have 

 hitherto supposed to be composed of 

 gentlemen of somewhat different 

 qualifications than are indicated in 

 this instance) , have submitted the 

 dried beef to a microscopical exami- 

 nation. Making all possible allow- 



ances for the proverbial inaccuracies 

 of newspaper reports, there is doubt- 

 less a trace of accuracy in this one, 

 enough to justify the present notice. 



'Kankakee, III., July 15. — Dr. Utley, 

 of the State Board of Health, has com- 

 pleted an investigation at Momence of 

 the dried beef poisoning, and says the 

 poisoning was surely caused by the meat. 

 He says further: "After a careful exami- 

 nation it seems impossible that the person 

 putting up the meat did not know it was 

 poisonous. The exact nature of the poi- 

 son, because of the inferior microscopic 

 facilities here, I am yet unable to deter- 

 mine. The investigation is necessarily 

 incomplete, because no post-mortem ex- 

 amination was held. Were the powers of 

 the State Board of Health enlarged, the 

 guilty parties in such cases could be more 

 quickly found and punished." 



' Dr. Ellis, of Kankakee, a consulting 

 physician in the poisoning cases, says : 

 "From a partial examination under the 

 microscope of the impure beef, 1 find a 

 marked characteristic to be a very un- 

 pleasant odor, made more apparent on 

 being macerated for a short time in pure 

 water at an ordinary temperature. I find 

 a total breaking down of the muscular 

 fibres. This destruction of muscular tis- 

 sue also means entire obliteration of the 

 fibrous covering of the muscle with the 

 blood corpuscles and fatty tissues, which 

 leads me to believe that this beef was 

 taken from an animal diseased, or more 

 probably one partly decomposed, before 

 being submitted to the so-called process 

 of curing." No more deaths from this 

 sickness have occurred, though several are 

 yet in a critical condition.' 



The evidence offered by Dr. Utley, 

 in spite of the ' inferior microscopic 

 facilities,' is scientifically complete — 

 in fact, the meat was poisonous, be- 

 cause Dr. Utley says so. 



Dr. Ellis, however, doubtless hav- 

 ing adequate microscopic facilities, 

 discovers an odor by a partial micro- 

 scopical examination ! He also finds 

 that if the meat is macerated for a 

 short time in pure water at ordinary 

 temperatures, the ' marked character- 

 istic odor' becomes more apparent! 

 We should think it might — the prob- 

 abilities are that the learned doctor 

 is quite right in this conclusion, if in 

 no other. 



