POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



139- 



pathologists now refuse to accept such kin- 

 ship in any shape. The possibility of com- 

 municating even a mild form of disease by 

 eating meat infected with rinderpest is not 

 supported by any recorded instance; yet 

 experiments whether such food would con- 

 vey infection must have been tried millions 

 of times. Instances are cited in which thou- 

 sands of affected cattle were eaten during 

 epizootics with no bad results. Typhoid 

 fever of swine was declared by Dr. William 

 Budd, in 1865, to be the exact counterpart 

 of enteric fever in man, but his conclusion 

 has recently been found untenable after a 

 most exhaustive research. The meat of 

 swine ill with it is of inferior quality and 

 diminished nutritive value, and is unfit for 

 food in an advanced stage of the disease, 

 but it does not carry typhoid fever. Epizo- 

 otic pleuro-pneumonia taints the whole car- 

 cass of the animal affected, and commu- 

 nicates blood-poisoning by inoculation. Dr. 

 Livingstone says that in South Africa the 

 meat of animals that died of it caused 

 malignant carbuncles in those who ate it. 

 Dr. Letheby relates that a number of per- 

 sons were made sick by eating sausages 

 made of it in London in I860. Dr. Gamgee 

 mentions a prevalence of carbuncles in a 

 convict establishment where such meat was 

 used, which ceased when the use was dis- 

 continued ; but similar meat has been used 

 largely in Paris, the north of France, at 

 Lille, and even in England, without visible 

 dangerous effects. Cattle fed on parts of 

 diseased hogs, and made to drink the food 

 from diseased pleurae, and animals in the 

 Zoological gardens fed on the meat, suffered 

 no ill effects. The communication of foot- 

 and-mouth disease to man, according to 

 Gamgee, "admits of no doubt." The dis- 

 ease has been transmitted by drinking the 

 milk of animals affected and by inoculation, 

 and there is a strong ' presumption that it 

 can be conveyed by ingested meat. The 

 existence of anthrax is determined by the 

 presence of the bacillus anthracis in the 

 blood of the subject. It is communicable 

 by contact, for the bacilli can make their 

 way through capillaries and large vessels, 

 and can pierce the skin and insinuate them- 

 selves where it has not been broken. Ex- 

 periment shows that the disease " can be 

 as readily conveyed by food as in any other 



way. If any portion of food ingested con- 

 tains live bacilli, or their spores, the con- 

 sumer runs a terrible risk ; and the tenacity 

 of life of these organisms is so great we 

 can not assign a limit to it." Several forms 

 of disease have been referred to anthracoid 

 causes. Whether they are anthracoidal or 

 not can be ascertained by searching for the 

 bacillus, which, if present, may be seen with 

 a glass of not very high power. The eom- 

 municability of erysipelas to man from in- 

 fected food, though exceedingly probable, 

 is hardly capable of direct proof. To con- 

 vey it through food by inoculation only re- 

 quires that it be present in the food, that 

 the food be imperfectly cooked, and that 

 the consumer have a minute wound in his 

 mouth. With regard to tuberculosis, Mr. 

 Vacher contends that direct evidence of the 

 human form of the disease having been 

 conveyed by ingested flesh from animals 

 affected by bovine tuberculosis, or " pearl- 

 disease," is wanting, although such flesh is 

 daily sold and bought in the open market, 

 and daily consumed by all classes. The 

 indirect evidence " has really little bearing 

 upon the point at issue." 



Massage and Mental Hygiene as Cnra- 

 tlye Agents. — Dr. Playfair has given ac- 

 counts in the " British Medical Journal " of 

 three really wonderful recoveries from seri- 

 ous disease by the "Weir Mitchell" treat- 

 ment, in which massage and mental hygiene 

 are the principal agents relied upon. One 

 patient, who had been unable to retain food 

 in any quantities for five years, began to 

 recover in three days, and in ten days had 

 an enormous appetite; another, a sufferer 

 for four years from partial paralysis, began 

 to recover in forty-eight hours, and was well 

 in a month; the third had been epileptic 

 and partly paralytic for sixteen years. She 

 began to improve in a few days, was out 

 driving and walking in six weeks, and two 

 months afterward went on a sea-voyage to 

 the Cape of Good Hope, in the course of 

 which she attended her former nurse through 

 a fit of sickness, and from which she came 

 back in robust health. The treatment in 

 these cases consisted of removal of the pa- 

 tient from her home surroundings, and her 

 complete isolation with her nurse ; and sys- 

 tematic muscular movement, with the use of 



