TRICHINA SPIRALIS. 
331 
On the day previous to the above-mentioned post-mortem 
examination I examined with the microscope several small 
pieces of muscles which had been taken from the bodies of 
persons who had died of the disease, and were given to me by 
the physician of Hettstaedt, Dr. Rupprecht, and I found a 
considerable number of trichinae in them. 
Previous to my departure from Hettstaedt eighteen to 
twenty persons had died of the trichina disease, and more than 
eighty persons were at that period afflicted with the same 
malady, produced by the same canse. 
According to the information I obtained on the spot, the 
disease begins a few days after eating the meat in which there 
were trichinae, with loss of appetite, and almost without ex¬ 
ception with diarrhoea and fever; oedema of the eyelids; also 
pain, or at least painful sensation of weakness, in the limbs; 
oedema of the joints; difficulty in moving the tongue; pro¬ 
fuse clammy perspiration; and those patients who do not 
become convalescent die either unconscious, with symptoms 
of typhus fever, or, in a few cases, remain conscious to the 
end, complaining of inability to breathe freely. 
The only important symptom of typhus absent in the disease 
is the enlargement of the spleen, and it is very probable that 
some of the so-called epidemics of typhus fever in former 
days were caused by the propagation of trichinae in the human 
body. 
Since the disease has been known (about three years ago) a 
great many cases have been observed in Germany. 
The vitality of the trichinae is not destroyed unless the meat 
or other substances in which they are located be subjected to 
the temperature of boiling water for a sufficient time to ensure 
that every particle has been acted upon by that degree of heat. 
Salting and smoking trichinous meat, as is usually done, does 
not appear to be sufficient to destroy the worms in all parts 
of the meat. 
Picric acid (Acidum Piero Nitricum) was tried with the hope 
that it might be administered with success to the patient, but 
it failed. 
In trichinous pork of a pig killed with picrin acid the 
worms were found alive.— Lancet . 
