296 TRICHINA WORMS 



" inspected " may do much damage. There is no inspection 

 for trichinae in force in the United States at the present time. 



Much could be done to prevent the prevalence of trichina in- 

 fection in pork by preventing hogs from eating food which might 

 be infected. Hogs should never be allowed access to the car- 

 casses of other hogs or to the dead bodies of rats and mice, or 

 to waste scraps of pork. Dead hogs or waste pork, if there is 

 any possibility of their being infected, should not be thrown where 

 rats and mice could prey upon them. If these principles were 

 carefully followed out, there is no doubt but that trichiniasis 

 could be reduced to a much greater extent than it has been. 



The symptoms of trichina disease in hogs are much less evident 

 than in man, and there is no certain diagnosis of it in living ani- 

 mals except by microscopic examination of the muscles for the 

 detection of the larvse. When heavily infected, hogs show severe 

 intestinal disorders, abdominal pains and stiff muscles, but there 

 is nothing diagnostic in these symptoms. A farmer who drives 

 sick hogs to market, however, in order to get rid of them, with- 

 out giving proper warning of their condition which might make 

 possible the discovery of trichina infection if present, should 

 be considered guilty of criminal negligence, and punished in 

 accordance with the damage done by this negligence. This is 

 particularly true if he feeds his hogs waste containing raw meat, 

 or allows them to feed upon dead animals — a very common 

 practice. 



As has recently been pointed out by Stiles, there is no prac- 

 tical or proper method of inspecting meat by which the absence of 

 Trichinella can be guaranteed, and it is therefore unjust to hold 

 a butcher responsible for cases of trichiniasis which may result 

 from the eating of pork sold by him. There are laws which pro- 

 vide that " diseased meat " shall not be sold and that an impUed 

 warranty of fitness for food goes with any sale of food. Neither 

 of these laws, however, can be unreasonably enforced. Techni- 

 cally all meat is diseased, since there are no market animals 

 which are not parasitized in some way. As to the " implied 

 warranty," this can go only with an implied guarantee on the 

 part of the buyer that the food will be properly prepared before 

 being eaten. Clams in the shell, unhusked corn and uncooked 

 beans are guaranteed as being fit for food only when properly 

 prepared. In like manner pork is sold with the understanding 



