THE DANGER OF PORK EATING.
Occasionally people learn by sad experience that the Lord knew what he was doing when he forbade his people Israel to eat swine's flesh, because it is "unclean." There is no doubt that the almost universal use of pork is the cause of an unestimable proportion of the diseases of the human family. There are three Napa County farmers now in a San Francisco hospital, suffering from trichinosis. Of one of the patients it is said that there is no hope of his recovery; the other two may possibly survive. The men became afflicted through eating fresh sausage. In a report of the case, the San Francisco Examiner says:— When a piece of the pork that caused the disease was placed under the microscope, it was seen that it swarmed with minute spiral worms, which were quickly classified as trichinæ. Each of the tiny parasites was inclosed in a lemon-shaped capsule. "If they only remained in the capsules," said Dr. Baum, "there might be no danger; but they don't." On the contrary, when a piece of muscular tissue which contains these capsules is swallowed, a great change takes place in their condition. A single ounce of diseased pork frequently contains 100,000 of these capsules, too, the reader should bear in mind. The little worms thus taken into the human stomach are immature, but in the process of digestion they are liberated from their capsules in from three hours to three days, and in the intestinal canal they attain sexual maturity in five days, and immediately thereafter commence to reproduce their species. The mature intestinal trichina is round, elongated, and extremely filiform. It is barely visible to the naked eye, and to the unaided vision looks much like a fine hair or a silvery thread. The head is drawn out almost to a line, while the caudal extremity is somewhat rounded off, and is very little thinner than the body. Of the treatment of the disease, one of the hospital physicians said:— The ordinary practice for trichinosis consists in giving the patient cathartics, with a view of expelling the worms which have not yet left their capsules, administering thymol or extract of male fern in order to benumb recently liberated parasites, and so make it possible to rid the system of them by the same cathartic agency, and keeping down fever, allaying pain, inducing sleep, and nourishing the system in order to keep up life while the unexpelled worms are migrating to the muscles. It often happens that traces of the disease linger for years in the human organism, sometimes showing itself in pains akin to rheumatism, and sometimes in a stiffness of the muscles.