148 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Fatal cases liave been reported by Continental observers. 
Tlius_, Professor Zenker, of Dresden, mentions that, among 136 
post-mortem examinations winch he made during eight months 
of the year 1855, he found four subjects evidently affected 
with trichina. He gives in detail the case of a farm girl who 
died under his observation in 1860, killed by trichinae. She 
had a month before been taking part with the other farm- 
servants in a particular pig-sticking, and in the consequent 
processes, and had probably (according to what is said to be 
not a very unusual practice) taken an occasional pinch of the 
sausage-meat which she had to chop. She soon fell ill, and 
died in five weeks. Her bowels contained swarms of adult 
trichinae, and the voluntary muscles throughout her entire 
body were colonized by myriads of larvae. It appeared, on 
inquiry, that other persons who took part in slaughtering the 
same pig also suffered, and that, though none died, two were bed- 
ridden for weeks. Microscopical examination of products which 
were remaining of the slaughtered pig — ham, sausages, and 
black-puddings — showed in them innumerable dead trichinae. 
In July, 1863, a paper was published by Dr. C. Tiingel, of 
Hamburg, giving particulars of a case in which certainly one 
death was caused, and perhaps also a second death, as well as 
some not fatal illness, by the consumption of trichinous pork 
on board ship. Of the two deaths, one occurred on the 24th, 
the other on the. 27th day after that on which the pig was 
slaughtered and the consumption of its flesh begun. 
In the last number of the Edinburgh Medical Journal 
similar instances are recorded, and, no doubt, ere long science 
will be enriched by a host of facts which prove that trichinous 
animal food is a danger to be very carefully avoided. 
I have gathered together the facts and observations in this 
brief article to demonstrate the precise nature of the relation 
between troublesome, dangerous, and even fatal parasitic 
diseases of human beings and swine. There are those who 
consider that we must trust to good cooking to prevent such 
diseases. I consider it just as reasonable to trust to cleanli- 
ness and ventilation to prevent human small-pox. There can 
be no doubt that care and cleanliness have a tendency mate- 
rially to diminish the chances of contagion ; but as for some 
wise end, no doubt, contagious diseases present the same 
determined tendency to reproduction that we notice in the 
multiplication of parasites, and as our first concern in relation 
to such maladies as small-pox is to destroy the poison or to com- 
bat the virulence of that poison by rendering the human frame 
but little susceptible to its deadly influences, should we aim 
primarily at the extermination of the parasites in the animals 
we eat. 
