552 
F. 8. BILLINGS. 
report with reference to the healthy condition of American pork, 
clauses 8, 9 and 10 reading as follows: 
“ 8. That the percentage of American hogs infected with 
trichinae is in all probability, by reason of the superiority of breed 
and feeding, much less than that among the hogs in any other 
country. 
“ 9. That the freedom from trichinosis of the two great pork 
consuming centres of the West, Chicago and Cincinnati, furnishes 
the strongest possible evidence of the purity of American pork. 
In Chicago, for a series of years, dnring which 40,000 deaths 
were reported, with their causes, only two cases of trichinosis 
were reported. In Cincinnati during the same period not a single 
case was reported. 
“ 10. That the reported cases of trichinosis have resulted from 
eating uncooked meat, shown to be inferior or rejected, and that 
thorough cooking entirely destroys this parasite and removes all 
danger in this regard from eating pork.” 
Let us examine these clauses from this wonderful State docu¬ 
ment in detail, and we shall see that whoever wrote it knew less 
about trichinae than about the truth. 
first .—Our Government had no right to issue a State docu¬ 
ment asserting that our pork contained less trichinae than the 
hogs of any other country, until it had instigated a large series 
of examinations (made in the interest of scientific truth, not the 
American Government or people) at different places, and thus 
approximately establish what the real percentage of infection is. 
Second .—‘‘Superiority of breed or feeding” are two things 
which, as far as we know, have no influence on the inoculation of 
pigs with trichinae. Of the breed certainly not, and as certainly 
not of feeding, as at present carried on, even in the West. 
Third .—If the pork consumed at the packing houses of 
Chicago and Cincinnati is so free from trichinae, why not publish 
the figures, showing the examinations made and by whom ? 
Perhaps it was the examination of 400 hogs by Dr. Paton 
at Chicago, April, 1881, among which he could not find a case 
of trichinosis, which led to this assertion ; but while we person¬ 
ally doubt the accuracy of Dr. Patou’s examination, still the re- 
