ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

All the experiments were conducted on a level surface covered by a thick layer of tan; this afforded a good foothold to the horse and prevented any accident in case he fell.

The muscular force a horse can exert in draught is governed by the weight of its body; other things being equal, a heavy horse will pull more than a light one. In these experiments an attempt was made to determine the proportion which the body weight bears to the limit of power, and for this purpose all the horses were weighed.

The total number of observations made was eighty-three, and the number of horses employed was eighty. The observations may be grouped under four heads, the grouping being determined by the spIrit in which the horse did its work. For example, a horse is classified" excellent" which met the gradu­ally increasing resistance by a gradual increase in force, e\ entually strainmg his utmost, sometimes lowering the body until the knees almost touched the ground in order that more weight might be placed in the collar, whilst one which met the resistance by relaxing instead of increasing its efforts, and was only made to pull by dint of stimulation, is clas5ified as "bad"; between these extremes come "good" and" fair"

In the group" excellent' there are thirty-seven obsenations; the average weight of the horses was 1526 Ibs., and the average weight pulled was 9861b5. One may therefore 5,11' that a horse exerting itself to the greatest P0551hle extent cannot exercise a dead pull of more that 78'5 per cent. of its body weight.

In the group "good" there are fifteen observations; the average weight of the horses was I 2 I 3 Ibs., and the average weight pulled was 942 Ibs, or 77'6 per cent. of the body weight.

A group of" fair" pullers, ten in number, gave an average body weight of I 20I Ibs., and an average pull of 848 lbs., or 70'6 per cent. of the body weight.

In the group" bad ,. some horses are included which were classified as "in­different"; the total number forming the group is nineteen, with an average weight of I 225 Ibs., and an average pull of 804 Ibs., or 65'6 per cent. of their body weight.

This enquiry only tells us the greatest effort a horse may exert at a given moment; it does not deal with his useful effective force in draught. This latter is liable to considerable variation, the state of the road and nature of the vehicle being the most important factors.

As a means of comparison with the above results Captain Smith quotes BruneI, who considered a force of traction of 100 Ibs. to IS0 Ibs. to be the most suitable for slow work of eight hours per diem; one may take the average of this at 8 per cent. of the body weight. During fast draught work the effort is considerably reduced; 40 Ibs. per horse was the force of traction employed in the fast mail coaches of years ago, or four per cent. of the body weight, taking the latter at 1000 Ibs. Under these conditions a day's work was performed in about fifty minutes, the stage being eight miles.-Jolfnzal of PII)'SIOlogy, NO.3, 1896.

EPIDEMICS OF TRICHINOSIS.

IN Kelbra-Altendorf, in July I895, about 240 persons were attacked with trichinosis. The symptoms exhibited by the patients differed to some extent from those commonly observed; in most cases the patient experienced nausea, but yet did not vomit; fever of considerable height soon set in, and to this there were addecl dull headache and dragging pains in the leg£, as we]] as in the neck, forehead, and orbital regions. These symptoms were speedily followed

E

66 ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

by swelling of the face, especially of the eyelids, in a great number of the patients. Another constant symptom was pain in the abdomen, which was generally accompanied with severe exhaustion; when a purgative was administered the patient passed typhoid-like stools. The epidemic had an unusually mild character, for only one patient died. A striking feature of it was that no childlen were affected; a larger proportion of men than of women were attacked. At first the doctor who attended the patients mistook the disease for typhoid, although all the patients admitted that they had recently partaken of minced pork in the raw state. The post-mortem of the one fatal case made the diagnosis certain. At this it was observed that the muscles were of a deep red colour, and in the first preparation examined several trichina! were found, some free between the muscular fibres, and others in the first stage of encapsulation, indicating that infection had taken place about six weeks before death. Subsequent enquiry showed that both the butchers from which the pork had been purchased lay under suspicion, as they had frequently before bought meat of an unwholesome character, and had not submitted all the pigs to examination. It was also ascertained that the trichina inspector had not himself taken the portions for examination, nor had they been taken in his presence from the slaughtered animals; his exalllination had extended only to flesh taken from one pig, although several pigs had been simul­taneously slaughtered.

In August 1895 it was reported that an epidemic of trichinosis had broken out in Klein-Quenstedt, a small village with 648 inhabitants. The information came from the doctor who had made the diagnosis, but four other practitioners had set the affection down for gastric fever, acute rheumatism, or influenza. The symptoms were such as are usually observed, but in some of the patients the extremities, especially the arms, were swollen; in some of them movement of the eyeball was attended with pain, and in addition to the pain in the muscles during rest, movement, and pressure, there was a striking feeling of depression and weakness; pain in the chest was also frequently complained of, and in some patients, in consequence of this, there was shortness of breath. Pain was also experienced in the muscles of mastication and deglutition. In the case of eight patients at the outset of the disease there was nausea and vomiting, but only one single patient had diarrhcea. The whole of the fifty­five persons attacked had on the 28th July eaten minced pork in the raw condition; this had all been obtained from one butcher. Some had also eaten sausage made from the same pig, and in one case only sausage had been eaten. The first symptoms of illness set in eight days after the consumption of the flesh. In this epidemic also, it is a striking fact that no children were attacked, and no case ended fatally. The diagnosis could not be made absolutely certain, since trichina! were not discovered in the piece of muscle excised from the biceps of one of the patients and submitted to microscopic examination. The trichina inspector who had examined the pig in question affirmed that he had taken pieces the size of a hazel nut from the diaphragm, the root of the tongue, the muscles of the eye, and the intercostal muscles; from each of these he had made three preparations, and he had spent three­quarters of an hour in the examination.

In the year J 884 an epidemic of tnchinosis occurred in the village of Strenz­Neuendorf. The village numbered 630 inhabitants, and of these eighty-six or r 4 per cent. were attacked, and twelve of the cases or 14 per cent. of those attacked ended fatally. All the patients admitted that they had eaten pork. In one small piece of sausage made from the flesh of the pig suspected of having been the cause of the outbreak, the examination of the first microscopic preparation revealed eight trichina!. In this outbreak also, it was observed that the symptoms were much less severe in children than ill adults. A specially interesting case was Olle in which a girl eight years old, along with

ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

her father, ate some raw pork, both about the same quantity; the father was severely attacked and lay for a long time in a dangerous state, whereas the child never made any complaint and showed no symptom of trichinosis. On the other hand, among the patients there were nine under ten years; one child of two years showed distinct though not severe symptoms, and in two children aged respectively eight and six years the symptoms were severe but they speedily disappeared. The latter two children belonged to the family of the butcher who had slaughtered the trichinous pig. Of the patients, the majority, namely twenty-seven, had eaten the flesh raw, while nineteen had eaten it as imperfectly roasted sausage, and four had eaten it after boiling. The largest number of attacks took place on the eighth day, corresponding with the period at which the trichina embryos wander outwards. Of the twelve fatal cases ten had eaten raw flesh and the other two had partaken of it imperfectly roasted. On an average in the fatal cases death occurred on the thirty-seventh day after the consumption of the flesh; the earliest case occurred in the third week, and the last in the seventh week. It appeared that up to the tenth year the disease in general ran a milder and more favourable course, but a fatal termination took place in a girl of ten-and-a­half, and also in her two brothers aged respectively fourteen :md sixteen years. At the post-mortem of one patient the muscles were found to be so infested with trichina! that in a preparation made from the laryngeal muscles thirty trichina! could be counted in one field of the microscope. The person who acted as trichina inspector in this village was a drunkard, and his examinations had been made in an extremely careless and superficial manner. There was subsequently found in his possession several mounted preparations taken from the pig in question, and in everyone of these trichina! could be recognised without difficulty, and indeed in such numbers that no inspector could with ordinary care have overlooked them.

In commenting upon the foregoing reports Scherk remarks that they furnish evidence that the regulations regarding trichina inspection in Germany are not sufficient to prevent epidemics of trichinosis. Experience has shown, especially in the province of Saxony, that epidemics occur from year to year. In the year 1865 Scherk had the opportunity to observe the deadly epidemic at Hedersleben, in which out of 2100 inhabitants 337 were attacked with trichinosis and 101 died. Scherk points out that in the pig trichinosis does not lead to any notable disturbance of the animal's health, and mentions that the animal which was responsible for the epidemic at Hedersleben had been exhibited in the shop as an unusually fine carcase. On account of the splendid appearance of this animal a workman specially desired to be supplied with a portion of flesh from it, and when he received it it was consumed by himself and his family in the raw state; neither he nor any member of his family was attacked, but it subsequently transpired that because the workman was a bad customer he had been supplied with flesh from another and, as it was thought, inferior pig. Scherk believes that trichinosis is stationary in the province of Saxony because the graves in which trichinous patients have been buried serve as new centres for the dissemination of the disease; he believes that rats devour the corpses, and that they in turn are eaten by pigs, and so the opportunity for the fresh infection of the human subject is brought about. He therefore believes that all patients who succumb to trichinosis ought to be cremated.

Liebert combats the above mentioned views of Scherk regarding the causation of epidemics of trichinosis. He cites the case of a locality in which every year a large number of pigs were reared; in each of three years out of ten one pig was found to be trichinous, although during this time no human being had died in this place from trichinosis, nor had any person who had left the locltllty been affected with that disease. Transmission of the trichime

68 ABSTRACT S AND REPORTS.

by means of the bodies of human beings was therefore in this case excluded; moreover, Liebert points oUl that even among the very poor dead bodies are protected from rats before burial, and that in graveyards it is improbable that the rats ever penetrate as far as the dead bodies. He contends that it is much more probable that only the pig and the rat are concerned in the circulus '{}itioslts " he points out that dead rats are devoured by their fellows within a few homs after their death, as may be observed in rats kept in cages. Moreover, when rats in confinement are starved the stronger soon kill the weakest and devour them, the head especially being gnawed away; it is also a habit of rats to greedily consume flesh of any sort to which they have access. On the other hand, rats are frequently eaten by pigs. Trichinosis is mainly maintained by transmission from rat to tat. When pigs are slaughtered it is a common precedure to cut out the eyes, and to cut off the ears and the end of the rectum and throw th ese away. In large slaughter-houses it is the custom to collect all such m aterials and either to burn them or sell them in the cooked condition for dogs' meat, but in many private slaughter-houses such offal is simply thrown on the dung heap, where it serves as a vehicle for infection of mice and rats. Liebert therefore thinks that with a view to the prevention of trichinosis it ought to be obligatory on inspectors to see that such offal is carefully collected and burnt; as a further precaution wherever pigs are kept an atteml,t ought to be made to kill all the rats, and when a dead one is discovered. it ought to be burnt.-Zeitscltrift jilr Fleiscll ulld Milell.Hygiene.

EQUINE HlEMOGLOBINURIA.

IN a recent number of the Berliner TIlieriirz/liche TVocllemcllrijt, Professor Dieckerhoff contributes an article in which he advocates a new method of treating this disease. The author says that there are few diseases of the horse regarding whose etiology opinions are more at variance than they are with respect to the nature of h~moglobinuria. This differer,ce of opinion is shown by the iarge number of different names for the disease. Although half a century has elapsed since Dieterichs called attention to lumbago of the horse, and since Hofer offered an explanation of the "black disease," the additions to our knowledge relate almost exclusively to the etiology of the disease and its morbid anatomy. It thus happens that while one can formu· late well-grounded regulations for the prevention of the disease, the morbid anatomy does not furni sh any rational guide to successful treatment.

In his text-book on "The Special Pathology and Therapeutics of the Domestic Animals," Dieckerhoff has fully discussed the prevailing views regarding the nature of the disease, and he contends that none of them is altogether satisfactory. The view which Bollinger urged (1877) has been very generally accepted. Bollinger defined the disease a "h~moglobinuria tox~mica," and ascribed the symptoms and lesions to the action of a hypo­thetical poison or toxic principle. Dieckerhoff, while accepting this view, cannot assent to the cunclusion that the h~moglobinuria and subsequent nephritis induced by this toxic substance constitute the immediate cause of death in fatal cases; on the contrary, he maintains that not merely in the slight, but also in the severe cases, in which the urine contains much h~moglobin, interference with respiration, and destruction of skin and sub­cutaneous tissue, with resorbtion of degeneration products, are the common causes of death.

The HlOst important and the most dangerous factor in the complex disease is the painful affection of the skeletal muscles, especially of the muscles of the