mentioned. One occurred at Aurillac, a village in France. Fifteen or sixteen customers of a particular dealer in goats' milk were at one and the same time attacked with all the symptoms of violent cholera; and about twenty-four hours afterwards the goat too was taken ill with the same affection, and died in three days.[1] The other instance occurred at Hereford in Westphalia. Six people of a family, after partaking of goat's butter-milk, were simultaneously attacked with violent vomiting, tension of the epigastrium, and retraction of the lower belly; and several of them suffered so severely as even to have been thought by their physician, Dr. Bonorden, to be in danger.[2] Dr. Westrumb has alluded to similar cases in his memoir on the poison of cheese, and has proved that the ordinary explanations of them are far from satisfactory. Among other judicious observations he remarks, that the poison has been generally believed to arise sometimes from the cattle having fed on the Euphorbia esula, a species of spurge; that, according to Viridet in his Tractatus de Prima Coctione, l. i. c. 15, certain fields in the neighbourhood of Embrim were of necessity abandoned by the shepherds, because the milk of their cows was rendered useless by the abundance of that plant among the herbage; but that he himself has found cattle will not touch it so long as grass and other wholesome vegetables are to be found in the pasturage.[3] Professors Orfila and Marc, who were appointed by the Society of Medicine of Paris to report upon the accident at Aurillac, state, that in parallel cases which had been referred to them by the police at Paris they had been unable to detect any mineral poison; that none of the received explanations are in their opinion satisfactory; and that they are disposed to ascribe the poisonous alteration of the milk to new principles formed by a vital process.
Another common article of food, which has occasionally produced similar effects with the poisonous sausages and cheese, is bacon. Dr. Geiseler has related an accident which occurred in a family of eight persons, and which he traced to this cause. The symptoms were almost exactly the same with those described by Kerner, with the addition, however, of delirium and loss of recollection; and in two they were so violent as seriously to endanger life. The father of the family alone escaped, having stewed his bacon, while the rest ate it raw.[4] His escape might have arisen from the fatty acid having been decomposed, or the acrid oil expelled, by the heat. It is not improbable that other varieties of cured meat may also become poisonous. Cadet de Gassicourt mentions, that he had been frequently desired by the police to examine cured meat which had produced symptoms of poisoning at Paris,[5] and Orfila makes the same remark in his Lectures on Medical Jurisprudence.[6] As the meat always came from the shops of meat-curers, and did not contain
