measure; and he now considers that the poison is a compound one, consisting of a fatty acid analogous to the sebacic, and of a volatile principle.[1] The results obtained by Dr. Dann coincide with the last opinion. Dann infers from his researches that the poisonous principle does not necessarily reside in an acid, but is an acrid empyreumatic oil, which when pure is not active, but is rendered so by uniting with various fatty acids.[2]
The results lately obtained by Buchner after an elaborate and careful analysis are somewhat different and probably nearer the truth. He first ascertained that the product of the distillation of fat has no analogy with the sausage-poison. He found it to consist of animalized acetic acid, and a fetid empyreumatic oil, the former of which has no injurious effect on animals, while the latter, though an active poison, is purely narcotic in its operation. On next examining a sausage sent to him from Würtemberg, which had violently affected four individuals and killed one of them in six days, he remarked that the poisonous principle is not soluble in water, or capable of being distilled over with it; and that cold aloohol removes a granular fatty matter, which, when purified by distilled water, has a yellowish colour, a peculiar nauseous smell, and a disagreeable oleaginous taste, followed by extraordinary dryness of the throat for several hours. Although it does not possess an acid reaction on litmus, it forms a soap with alkalis, and is separated again by acids unchanged; and consequently it may be considered a fatty acid, to which Buchner proposes to give the name of Botulinic acid [Würst-fett-saüre]. It concentrates in itself the poisonous properties of the crude sausage. Thirty grains of it, which formed three-fourths of the whole product of a single sausage, were given in two doses to a puppy with an interval of a day between them. For some hours after the second dose no apparent effect was produced. But gradually the animal became dull, lay in the same spot, wasted rapidly away notwithstanding a vigorous appetite, and died of exhaustion on the thirteenth day. Half a grain causes insupportable dryness in the throat, which does not go off for several hours.[3] With these results the contemporaneous and unconnected researches of Dr. Schumann accord very remarkably. Alcohol boiled on the poison-sausage deposited on cooling a fatty matter, which, when washed with distilled water, possessed all the properties specified by Buchner, as characterizing his fatty acid, and acted on animals in the same way as the sausage-poison.[4]
The poison of cheese has been for some time more generally known. Dr. Henneman has published an interesting essay on several cases which happened at Schwerin in 1823.[5] Another account of a similar accident which happened at Minden in 1825 has been published in Rust's Magazin.[6] But by far the best information on the subject
- ↑ Weiss, die neuste Vergift. durch Verdorbene Würste, &c. mit Vorrede und Anhang begleitet, von Dr. J. Kerner. Carlsruhe, 1821.
- ↑ Horn's Archiv, 1828, i. 596.
- ↑ Toxicologie, Zweite Auff. 1829, p. 136.
- ↑ Das Wurst-fett-gift. oder neue Untersuchung, &c. Archiv für Medizinische Erfahrung, 1829, i. 30 and 75.
- ↑ Hufeland's Journal, lvii. 2, 106.
- ↑ Magazin für die gesammte Heilkunde, xxi. 247.
