ANOTHER WARNING TO MEAT EATERS.
By William Penniman
A New York paper in a recent issue, states: "Fifty million worms in the muscles of a living man, was the diagnosis two physicians made of the case of a patient in Bellevue Hospital, last week. The man was a butcher, nineteen years of age, who obtained admission to the hospital to be treated for rheumatism, from which he was supposed to be suffering. As the ordinary symptoms of that disease were not apparent, a careful examination of the patient was made, and ultimately a small portion of muscle was extracted from his shoulder, and placed under a microscope. It was found to be full of the worms called trichinae, and the disease had been contracted by eating small portions of raw, diseased meat. Medical treatment failed to effect a cure, and the patient died from exhaustion, on December 6. A post mortem examination by the two professors, revealed the fact that over fifty million of these minute creatures had existed in the body of the miserable man. The case recalls that mentioned in Acts 12:23." This quotation does not say what kind of raw, diseased meat was used, but it was probably pork, as the trichinae is more often found in this than any other kind of meat. It is sometimes in beef. It may be in fowls, or in any animals (even fish) which consume diseased flesh. The only safety, then, is a total abstinence from flesh eating, or in having the worms well cooked. (And who wants to eat cooked worms, if they are dead?)
WM. PENNIMAN.