Tyrotoxicon. 3. The cattle should be well and properly fed. 4. The water that the cattle drink should not be from old, stagnant, and filthy ponds. 5. The milk should be chilled before transporting any great distance, and should not be put into a pantry, or an old well, to keep it cool, where there is blue mould, decaying timber, or foul air. 6. Cows should not be milked at unusual hours. 7. The vessels used should be scrupulously clean, and preferably of glass or earthenware, or good tin. DES MOINES, Iowa, July 15, 1889. ROBERT MCNUTT, M. D. In 1883 and 1884 there were reported to the Michigan State Board of Health about three hundred cases of cheese poisoning. Generally, the first symptoms appeared within from two to four hours after eating the cheese. When the symptoms appeared later the cases were milder. The severity of the symptoms varied with the amount of cheese eaten. Every one, in the practice of one physician, who ate of the cheese was taken with vomiting. At first the tongue was white, but later it became red and dry, the pulse was feeble and irregular, the countenance was pale. None of these were fatal, but several deaths from cheese poisoning in other cases have occurred. Professor Vaughan, of Michigan State University, made the chemical analysis of the cheese that caused the three hundred cases of sickness. The cheese appeared to be good, and there was nothing in the taste or odor to excite suspicion, but from a freshly cut surface there exuded an acid fluid. When a piece of good cheese with a piece of bad cheese was placed before a dog or a cat, the animal always selected the good cheese. The acid fluid contained microbes, and by chemical analysis a poison was found, which Professor Vaughan named Tyrotoxicon (cheese poison). Since that time this poison has been found in many samples of cheese that caused sickness. About two years after he discovered Tyrotoxicon, Dr. Vaughan found the poison in milk that had stood in a well-stoppered bottle for about six months, and experimented until he found the conditions under which milk becomes poisonous. The subject was more elaborately worked out by Drs. Newton and Wallace, in 1886, when a large number of people at two of the hotels at Long Branch The Murderous Nursing Bottle. were taken sick soon after supper. Forty-three people were made sick by drinking milk. The milk used at supper came from a dealer who milked his cows at noon, and then without cooling the milk carried it eight miles during the hottest part of the day to the hotel. All the conditions were favorable for spoiling the milk, which was shown by chemical alalysis to contain the poison Tyrotoxicon. In 1888, Drs. Vaughan and Novy obtained Tyrotoxicon from some ice-cream that had poisoned a number of people at Lawton, Michigan. It was thought at first the illness was caused by the vanilla that was used for flavoring, for the persons who ate lemon icecream at the same time were not made sick. But the doctors took two teaspoonfuls each of the flavor and were not made sick. Then it was found that the custard from which the lemon cream was made was frozen immediately, while the custard for the vanilla cream had been allowed to stand for some hours in an old wooden building, unoccupied, which had been used as a meat market.. Since that date the mystery of ice-cream poisoning has been invariably solved in the discovery of Tyrotoxicon as the cause. It is pertinent here to state that the presence of Tyrotoxicon in cheese can be easily and very simply detected, and every grocer or dealer in cheese should provide the means whereby it can be known. Ordinary blue litmus paper, which can be procured at any first-class drug store, if applied to the fresh cut edge of cheese, will turn red, and the more virulent the Tyrotoxicon, the deeper and more rapid will be the change in the color of the paper. Every citizen can thus easily protect themselves against poisoning from this ptomaine. THE MURDEROUS NURSING BOTTLE. Cholera Infantum and other gastro-intestinal diseases are the cause of many deaths during the hot months, that with proper care could be avoided. The milk given to the little babe should be The Murderous Nursing Bottle. fresh and absolutely pure. One fruitful source of impurity is the nursing bottle with the rubber tube. It is an abomination that ought not to be tolerated, for the "slaughter of the innocents" produced by this combination is fearful. It may be more convenient than other forms, but it is absolutely impossible to keep them so clean as not to endanger life. Hundreds of children whose early death is attributed to a mysterious Providence, or to the unavoidable dangers of hot weather, are slain annually by this infamous rubber tube. They are not necessary. If a bottle must be used, it is infinitely better to use the common rubber nipple. This can be removed-turned inside out and kept comparatively clean and sweet. The old fashioned way of feeding with a spoon is better than any rubber arrangement. The Committee on Hygiene of the Medical Society of the State of New York, in a report in respect to the extent of the use of these rubber tubes, says: "In spite of the fact that their use has always been discouraged by the profession, and that they are condemned in all text-books, as being dangerous, they are widely sold in all the shops, and continue to be widely used among the poorer classes." In summing up their report upon this point, the committee note: 1. The enormous mortality among bottle-fed children in tenement-house districts. 2. One of the most important, if not the most important factor in this mortality is the use of food improper, uncleanly, and, most of all, milk in which the changes of decomposition have begun. 3. One of the chief obstacles to pure food is dirty bottles and vessels, especially those containing particles of sour milk. 4. The tube bottles are so constructed that cleanliness is a matter of impossibility by any means ordinarily employed, even by the use of brushes. 5. The shop-keepers assert that many of the very poor do not buy the brushes at all, to save additional expense. To what extent are these used? Inquiries have been made at nineteen drug stores to inquire of their sales. Four stores in tenement districts sell on an average eight times as many with as without The Murderous Nursing Bottle. any tubes. Five stores in good localities sell, on the average, six times as many of the other variety. These figures develop a wonderful fact-an anomaly. Here are the poorer classes, who can ill afford the loss of time required for nursing and medical attendance upon their children, through ignorance it must be, of the dangers, paying more for a complicated rubber tube arrangement than the rich do for a cheaper and more healthful instrument. Dr. Seibert, demonstrated before the New York Academy of Medicine, by charts and tables covering ten years' observation, that Cholera Infantum became epidemic whenever the daily minimum temperature was sixty degrees Fahrenheit, or upward, and subsides as soon as it falls below that number. He attributes it to the fact that with such a daily minimum temperature, the milk fed readily turns sour, and as almost all these cases occur in hand-fed children, the disease becomes more prevalent because of improper feeding, and the thermal condition combined. Dr. H. F. Hendrix says of Cholera Infantum: During the progress of the disease, and for some time before active symptoms manifest themselves, we have noticed the insatiable thirst of these . little patients, and always noticed marked relief from giving them plenty of cold water. To prevent disease, I claim, is as much the duty of the physician as to cure, and anything to that end suggested by the medical profession will, I feel sure, find a ready response in the hearts of the people; and in this connection I feel it my duty to say (taking my own observation as a guide) that Cholera Infantum will not occur in any case where a plentiful supply of cold water is given at all times and on all occasions, night or day, whenever the little one desires it. And further, I would like to impress upon the minds of those who have the care of children, to lay aside any scruple of reserve they have in regard to giving cold water and to give it freely. Those not able to let their wants be known should have it placed to their lips and let drink to their satisfaction. Food given to all children, should be, if possible,.perfectly fresh, and if liquid without the intervention of rubber tube, or any other such death-dealing device. Milk tasting sweet is far from being suitable at all times. Often before it has time to be digested or assimilated, by the superadded heat of the stomach, decomposition takes place, important chemical changes occur, and what was Meat Poisoning. intended to nourish becomes an irritant, if not a cause of death. It were better if the milk intended for children could be taken from the cow at least four or five times daily to insure freshness. A little lime water added to the milk affords an additional means of safety. MEAT POISONING. November 30, 1888, a sample of head-cheese was received from Brush Creek, taken from a butcher shop, and which was supposed to contain poison, as a large number of persons who had eaten the meat had been taken violently and suddenly ill, with symptoms of poisoning. Dr. A. L. Martin furnishes a history of the case to wit: There were about thirty cases under my treatment, and in all the symptoms were similar. The disease manifested itself in three to ten hours after eating the meat. There was sudden nausea, followed by violent emeses (vomiting), and almost involuntary evacuation of the bowels. Great desire for cold drinks, which were promptly rejected by the stomach. Pulse usually slow, and temperature abnormal, succeeded in a few hours by chilliness and profuse perspiration, and the patients improved by sleep. Some of the patients had severe cramps in the stomach, and others intense distress in the intestines. The trouble slowly yielded to treatment without fatal result. The meat was given to Professor Davis, Chemist of the Board, who, after careful analysis, pronounced the meat poisoned with Tyrotoxicon. In February, 1889, notice was given to the State Board of sickness in the family of Michael Buechner, at Dunkerton, in Black Hawk county. Eight persons were affected. From the symptoms it was diagnosed by the attending physician, that the trouble was due to some poison taken into the stomach. Two other physicians confirmed this diagnosis. Investigation showed that the family had been eating meat from a steer that had been affected with Actinomycosis, or so-called, "lump-jaw." A few weeks before the steer was slaughtered, the lump or tumor on the jaw was incised, and from it |