Diseases caused by meat

If decomposed or putrid meat is eaten, it usually gives rise to vomiting, diarrhoea, collapse, and sometimes death. In some cases very severe symptoms of poisoning have been set up by eating food in which the decomposition is extremely slight. This is especially the case with sausages, canned meats, and fish. These effects are probably not produced by the slight decomposition, but by poisonous alkaloids which have been formed by certain bacteria, and the most thorough cooking fails to remove entirely the danger from these poisons. Shellfish taken from beds which may have been contaminated with sewage in many cases produced fatal results.

Parasitic diseases are sometimes conveyed by imperfectly cooked meat. There are certain organisms which appear to have more than one stage in their life-history, e.g., some organisms live during one period of their existence in the body of some animal, and the second period in the body of a human being. There is one called the Cysticercus bovid, which is sometimes found in beef (especially in N. W. India); this, if not killed by thorough cooking, gives rise to a kind of tapeworm in human beings.

Another organism of this class, which is more common in England, is the Trhichina spiralis, so called because, when seen under the microscope, it is coiled up in a kind of spiral. This organism is, as a rule, only found in the flesh of the pig. When meat containing these is eaten, the small organisms begin to bore their way through the walls of the alimentary canal, causing severe pain, great prostration, and weakness, and frequently producing death. This disease is called trichiniasis. If the general health of the patient is good, if he has a strong constitution which has not been weakened by alcoholic stimulants, and is able to retain vitality until the trichinae have found their way into the muscular tissue and settled down there, the patient may recover. Trichianiasis is most prevalent where pork is eaten in the form of sausages, ham, etc., either uncooked or very imperfectly cooked. 

Comment: I don't feel like eating anymore....