530 FOOD PRESERVATION 
lack of more definite bodies to which to attribute the effects of disease 
caused them to be emphasized in this connection. Little data was 
necessary to prove that they were not important in bacterial toxemia. 
In relation to food poisoning, their significance is negligible. It has 
been very casy in the past for diagnosticians to attribute the various 
alimentary disturbances to the presence of ptomaines. This was 
especially true if the patient had been eating of canned foods. It is 
unfortunate that such a close relation between ptomaine poisoning and 
canned foods has been established. Probably no food is less liable 
to be of any importance in this connection than canned foods. <A food 
which has putrefied to the point where ptomaines are present will be 
excluded by the organoleptic tests; it is also reasonable to assume that 
the ptomaines themselves are soon destroyed by bacterial action. 
Vaughan and Novy have given extended attention to the ptomaines and 
it may be due almost entirely to their investigations that ptomaines 
have held such an important position in food poisoning. They pro- 
posed a rather elaborate nomenclature for the different types of poison- 
ings. Some of them are as follows: 
Milk poisoning. ... 1...) 6...) galactotoxismus 
Cheese poisoning. ... .. .. ...  .. ..tyrotoxismus 
Fish poisoning.....  ....... . .  .l¢hthyotoxismus 
Meat poisoning... .... 2 ........0e. .kreatoxismus 
Food poisoning. ......0 0.0... cece eee bromototoxismus 
Relation of Carriers to Food Infections. Common infections of foods 
by carriers are, dysentery, typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever and strep- 
tococcus sore throat. Data are being accumulated very rapidly to 
enlighten this question. 
The question is often asked, how long may a person continue to 
distribute the bacilli in feces and urine? In answer to this question 
there are several cases which might be mentioned. Bolduan and 
Noble (1912) report a dairyman who had typhoid fever at fiftcen years of 
age. He was a carrier for forty-six years showing B. tzphz in his stools. 
Martz (1917) reported a carrier of fifty-five years’ standing. The case 
of a woman who was apparently a carrier for fifty-four years is men- 
“tioned in an Editorial of the Jour. Am. Med. Assn., Vol. 52 (1909), 388. 
The handling of carriers is not a settled question. Kendall (1916) 
pointed out the danger of carriers handling foods. Several severa 
epidemics of typhoid are known to have been caused by food infected 
froma carrier. The ideal situation will only be reached after all handlers 
