256 The Bacteriology of Foods 



Pathogenesis.- — The effects in man and animals are somewhat 

 similar. In the former, with or without any sign of gastro- 

 intestinal disturbance, the patient is seized with chilliness, vertigo, 

 tremor, prostration, faintness, feeble and accelerated pulse and 

 respiration, profuse salivation, muscular weakness and palsy, 

 protrusion of the eyeballs, dysphagia and various other nervous 

 disorders, ending fatally in bad cases. In some outbreaks of the 

 intoxication a mortaUty as high as 25 per cent, has been observed. 



Bacteriological Diagnosis. — The suspected meat may furnish the 

 clue. As the patient is probably intoxicated but not necessarily 

 infected, not much can be learned by any examination of him. 



A sample of the meat may show nothing abnormal to the naked 

 eye. A fragment of it may be macerated in sterile salt solution for 

 making the necessary tests. When the salt solution has taken up all 

 that it can extract, it is heated to 6o°C. for half an hour to destroy all 

 but the spores of the B. botulinus, and then is planted on gelatin- 

 dextrose plates, and into fermentation tubes with dextrose broth. 

 These are placed under conditions of as perfect anaerobiosis as pos- 

 sible and kept at 25°C. to grow. 



In cases of very bad infection of the meat, enough toxin may be 

 extracted by the salt solution to poison guinea-pigs. This may be 

 tried, the salt solution extract being sterilized by filtration through 

 porcelain before being injected into the animals. 



Prophylaxis. — Thorough cooking of meat is a very important 

 sanitary precaution in all cases, destroying all of the animal para- 

 sites, as well as most of the bacteria and their spores and the toxin of 

 B. botulinus. It does not, however, destroy the toxin of E. enterit- 

 idis (q.v.). 



Treatment. — ^Kempner* has succeeded in preparing an antitoxin 

 that possesses both preventive and curative powers, but the manner 

 in which the intoxication occurs, makes it difficult to apply in 

 practice. 



3. Fish-poisoning (Ichthyotoxism) sometimes follows the con- 

 sumption of canned and presumably spoiled fish, sometimes the 

 consumption of diseased fish. It is not known whether it depends 

 upon ptomains or upon toxicogenic germs, though probably the 

 latter as Silber has isolated a Bacillus piscicidus that is highly 

 toxicogenic. 



4. Mussel-poisoning {Mytilotoxism) depends partly upon irri- 

 tating and nervous poisons in the mussel substance, in part upon 

 toxicogenic germs that they harbor. 



5. Canned Goods. — Improperly preserved canned goods not in- 

 frequently spoil because of the growth of bacteria, but the occur- 

 rence of gas-formation, acidity, insipidity, etc., causes rejection of 

 the product, and but few cases of supposed poisoning from canned 

 goods can be authenticated. 



* "Zeitschr. fur Hygiene," 1897, xxvi, 482. 



