EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
401 
that the outbreak on board the Cornwall ’ was ‘ trichino¬ 
sis/ he merely means trichinosis of a particular sort, and 
at present we have only the bare statement of his opinion, 
unsupported by ‘ a particle of evidence,’ in confirmation 
of it. 
Knowing something of trichinosis in man and animals 
from observation and experiment, we confess that we were 
not prepared to see in the columns of the Lancet the state¬ 
ment which implies that what has for years past been fami¬ 
liar to the profession as trichinosis may, after all, be only 
trichinosis of a particular sort , and that the wanderings of 
other parasites may be quite as correctly described as, and 
actually constitute, a “ trichinosis.” 
The state of the case is not improved by an article which 
we find in the British Medical Journal for May, in reference 
to a report by Dr. Armistead on the health of the Dunmow 
Rural Sanitary District during 1879, in which an account 
is given of an outbreak of trichinosis (?) at Thaxted in Essex 
in June of last year. Dr. Armistead states that, on June 
18th, he examined fifty-two persons who had eaten some 
sausages purchased at eightpence per pound from a man 
who had a stall in the street at Thaxted on June 14th. Of 
these persons forty-four showed symptoms of irritant poison¬ 
ing, three others were slightly ill, and only five escaped 
without any ill effects. The cases were suspected, from the 
symptoms, to be due to the presence of Trichinae, a conclusion 
for which there does not appear to be any warrant. The 
symptoms varied but little, diarrhoea prevailed in all the 
cases and in some was very severe; vomiting; thickly- 
coated tongue; pain in the stomach and back and in the 
muscles, sometimes extending to the ends of the fingers; 
pain in the head and, in some cases, double vision and 
swelling of the eyes likewise existed. More or less fever fol¬ 
lowed, with perspirations, thirst, and loss of appetite. In 
four of the cases vomiting and diarrhoea, with pain, began 
within twelve hours after eating the sausages. In one case 
sixteen hours elapsed. In twenty cases the symptoms were 
very violent at about the twenty-fourth hour. In four cases 
