KBEOTOXISMUS. 209 



were made sick. All were taken within from two to four hours 

 after eating the chicken, with nausea, violent griping and purging ; 

 many fainted while attempting to rise from bed. The chickens 

 were killed Tuesday afternoon, picked and left hanging in the mar- 

 ket room (not in cooling room) until Wednesday forenoon, when 

 they were drawn and carried to a restaurant, and here left in a warm 

 room until Thursday morning, when they were cooked (not very 

 thoroughly), pressed, and served at the banquet that night. This 

 food was examined by Vaughan and Perkins, and found to contain 

 two microorganisms, a slender bacillus, from four to five times as 

 long as broad, and a streptococcus. The bacillus was fatal to white 

 rats, guinea-pigs and rabbits, when administered intra-peritoneally, 

 intra-venously, and subcutaneously. The streptococcus was not 

 fatal when given in pure culture, but mixed cultures of the two in- 

 duced death; and in these instances, when administered subcuta- 

 neously, in addition to lesions found after the employment of pure 

 cultures of the bacillus, there was extensive sloughing. This baciUus 

 is motile, takes the ordinary stains readily, and is decolorized by 

 Gram's method. It grows very slowly at ordinary temperature 

 and rapidly at 37°. Of two cultures of equal age, one grown at 

 ordinary temperature and the other at 37°, 1 c.c. of the former was 

 necessary to induce death, while \ c.c. of the other proved fatal. 

 The anaerobic cultures were much more powerful than the aerobic. 

 J c.c. of a beef tea culture heated to 60° for thirty minutes killed, 

 while 1 c.c. heated to 100° for fifteen minutes failed to kill. 



In an outbreak of bromatotoxismus at an asylum in Norway, the 

 patients' food was veal, and in this Hoist found a small bacillus 

 similar to but not identical with that of Gartner. Lewis found a 

 ptomain, which he supposed to be neuridin, in corned beef that 

 poisoned people in Ohio. Poels reported cases of poisoning in 

 Rotterdam from the eating of meat supposed to be from a healthy 

 animal. A variety of the colon bacillus was found in this meat and 

 it was shown that sterilized cultures were sufficiently toxic to kill 

 calves. The same bacillus has been found in other outbreaks of 

 kreotoxismus in HoUand. Zorkendorfer reported the presence of 

 anthrax baciUi in some meat that poisoned many people, some 

 fatally, near Teplitz, in 1894 ; however, his identification of the 

 germ cannot be regarded as positive. Di Mattel has stated that the 

 flesh of animals dead from symptomatic anthrax may retain its power 

 of infection after having been preserved in a dry state for ten years. 

 Siedler reported four cases of poisoning from decomposed goose 

 grease. The symptoms consisted of giddiness, prostration and vio- 

 lent vomiting. Christison reported cases in which persons were 

 seriously, some fatally, affected by eating various kinds of meat 

 which had undergone partial putrefaction. Ollivier found six per- 

 sons poisoned, four of them fatally, by eating decomposed mutton, 

 14 



