POISONS DEVELOPED IN MEATS AND SAUSAGES. 521 
which were afflicted with glanders or farcy without suffering 
inconvenience. 
It was the same with animals which had died of conta¬ 
gious typhus in the years 1814, 1815, and 1816. 
These considerations are likewise entirely confirmed by 
M. Payen, in his excellent f Traite des Substances Alimen- 
taires. 3 (Paris, 1854, p. 37.) 
These facts explain, moreover, in the most simple manner, 
the ideas of physiological chemistry, when we consider the 
powerfully modifying action which the gastro-enteric juices 
exert on the proteinic combinations introduced into the 
digestive tube, an important circumstance, to which we shall 
have occasion to recur in refuting the hypothesis of putrid 
poisoning, w T hich Liebig has set up for explaining the poison¬ 
ing by decayed meats. 
But if the dogmatic principles of modern science, in accord¬ 
ance with careful experiment, prove the perfect innocuity of 
the flesh of diseased animals, it is not the same with regard 
to certain musty preserved meats, or meats which have 
undergone spontaneous alteration. 
Too many examples have indeed demonstrated that cer¬ 
tain alimentary preparations, and particularly pork-butchers 3 
meats, are susceptible, especially when they have been pre¬ 
served too long in a damp and warm atmosphere, of a pe¬ 
culiar alteration, hitherto unknown in its essence, but 
capable of determining mortal accidents, which frequently 
present analogies with those which decayed sausages cause. 
We may mention in support of what we advance some 
facts, scattered in the annals of medicine, relative to symp¬ 
toms of this kind, in regard to which chemical researches 
have hitherto been quite unfruitful. 
On the 7th of May, 1832, M. Chevallier, chemist, of 
Paris, was called upon to make, in common with two phy¬ 
sicians, a report on some pork-butchers 3 meats, which had 
occasioned serious symptoms of poisoning in several 
persons. 
From the minute researches made by this committee, it 
resulted that these matters contained no trace of metallic 
bodies injurious to health, but it was remarked that they 
were over-run with mouldiness, which was spontaneously 
developed when they w T ere made use of. 
In a popular fete, which took place at Zurich in 1839, 
more than 600 persons partook of a repast, which consisted 
principally of cold roast veal and ham. Some time after 
having taken this food, almost all the guests were taken ill, 
and at the end of eight days most of them were confined to 
