522 POISON DEVELOPED IN MEATS AND SAUSAGES. 
their beds. A careful inquiry showed that the veal and ham, 
which had formed the basis of the meal, and were the cause 
of these poisonings, contained no trace of metallic poisons, 
but that they had undergone the commencement of decay. 
In 1841, the Belgian papers reported that Captain Ney- 
geen, of the Swedish ship Neptune , was seriously ill, with all 
the men of his crew, from having eaten raw, some decayed 
salt meat, which had been sold to him by a provision mer¬ 
chant of Antwerp. 
In 1842, at Reims, a man named Etienne, and his wife, 
breakfasted on pork-bntchePs meat, bought of a man named 
Lacourte. Some time after, both experienced symptoms 
of poisoning^ and the same day similar symptoms manifested 
themselves in various persons who had eaten ham from the 
same pork-butcher. 
Geiseler found analogous symptoms in seven persons, who 
had eaten of a raw ham in which mouldiness had developed 
itself; whilst another person who had eaten of the same ham, 
but lolled , experienced no ill effects. 
Every one knows the distressing circumstances which re¬ 
sulted from the development of the Oidium aurantiacum , ob¬ 
served in 1843, by M. Payen, in the ammunition bread of 
the camp established near Paris. 
Dr. Westerloff likewise mentions several cases of poisoning 
owing to the use of mouldy rye bread. 
Orfila and Cadet de Gassicourt also mention having been 
several times called upon to analyse meats brought from 
pork-butchers of Paris, and which had occasioned poisoning, 
without being able to discover in them the slightest trace of 
mineral poison. 
Finally, Dr. Olivier, of Angers, reports an observation of 
serious symptoms of poisoning from eating a meat-pie in an 
advanced state of mouldiness, in which he was unable, in the 
analysis which he made with the assistance of M. Barruel, 
to detect any trace of copper, or other poisonous sub¬ 
stance. 
This is not all. Symptoms have often also been observed, 
in different countries, produced by the use of rancid fats or 
decayed cheese, which poisonings, from the indentity of the 
symptoms observed, seemed to be due, in all appearance, to 
the same cause as the foregoing. Thus, the police of Frankfort 
published, on the 10th of February, 1828, a special instruc¬ 
tion in respect of numerous cases of poisoning which had 
been observed in that city in consequence of the use of 
spoiled cheeses, in which chemical reagents could detect no 
poisonous principles. 
