Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1875 — Eating Raw Meat. [ARTICLE]

Eating Raw Meat.

The pernicious practice of eating raw meat prevails to a considerable extent throughout the country among children. Smoked ham is thekind most commonly used. Ido not think parents would allow it did they know the dangers attending its use. The microscope has revealed the fact that meat commonly used for food (beef, pork, etc.) frequently contains a living parasite (Cysticercus). It has been further shown by experiment that this parasite, when taken into the alimentary canal, becomes the tferffa or tapeworm. Dr. Kuchenmeister performed a series of experiments, showing that when the fullgrown joint of the tapeworm is thrown off from its posterior extremity the eggs which it contains have been somewhat developed, so that each one contains an imperfectly-formed Cysticercus, which, when taken into the stomach of another animal, passes through its coats and becomes imbedded in the muscular and areloar tissues, where the process of development is completed, and we have a fully-developed Cysticercus. ■Now when the meat containing these living Cysticercus is taken into the -alimentary canal of a third animal, it attaches itsejf to the mucus membrane, and by a process of buddings becomes the full-grown tapeworm. A similar experiment was performed upon the human subject. Some meat containing living Cysticerci was given a criminal seventy-two hours before his execution, and upon examining his body after death no less than ten young tapeworms were found in the intestinal canal. These highly-interesting and, in a practical view, important facts have been fully substantiated by a number of experimenters. While it is certain that all meat does not contain living parasites it is not safe to eat it raw or not thoroughly cooked. It is a matter of observation that butchers and cooks are more frequently affegted with tapeworm than any other class. It is the presence of this parasite in large numbers that renders pork “ measly,” as it is called. The meat contained in bologna sausage as well as dried beef is liable to contain living Cysticerci. . Eating raw meat is not the only source of the common tapeworm but it is the most fruitful one, and its prevention involves care never to eat meat not thoroughly cooked —if. A. liodeburgh, M. D., in Ohio Farmer.