Page 122 - My FlipBook

ditions, as we find them, to separate the effect of a tox-
albumin from the effect of a toxin or an alkaloidal poison.
Yet there are means by which this may be done. This effect
of micro-organisms has been found mostly in the saprophites
where they have grow^n in foodstuff and that foodstuff has
been eaten and poisoning has been the result. The poison-
ing in this case is similar to that of a dose. It is not the pro-
duction of a disease in the sense in which I have been speak-
ing, but it is poisoning by a dose taken into the stomach, and
if the patient lives he soon recovers ; if the poisoning has
been too great they die quickly. This has occurred mostly
in the poisoning by ice cream, the poisoning by milk, and oc-
casionally in the poisoning by meats in which these micro-
organisms have grown, passed through their life processes
and have died in large numbers ; then their bodies go into
solution, the albumin of which these bodies is formed is
distributed in the material and eaten with it, and the person
is poisoned simply by this dose. Often it is very severe
;
many persons die or many persons become very sick from
eating substances of this kind. Now, Vaughn succeeded in
obtaining these poisons at first by getting portions of milk
or portions of ice cream of which persons had eaten and
become sick ; he examined these and isolated an albumin
that proved to be poisonous and produced similar effects
upon animals. Then by growing the micro-organisms arti-
ficially he produced also the same kind of a poison. Now,
how many of these tox-albumins there may be, how many
kinds of saprophitic micro-organisms may produce this class
of poisons, we do not know. Fortunately, there does not
seem to be very many, and yet, when we count up the cases
of poisoning of this nature that have occurred in the world
there are large numbers of them. A good many have oc-
curred in the United States and we may expect that a good

many will occur in the future, because people are not suffi-
ciently careful with these classes of foodstuffs. It not only
occurs in milk ; it occurs in meat—in any kind of foodstuff.
The poisoning by sausage that was so prevalent in Europe,
particularly in Germany, a few years ago was evidently of
this. particular nature, in which the lives of a good many per-
sons were lost, and manv more were seriously ill for a time.

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