The communicability to man of diseases from animals used as food / by Henry Behrend.

  • Behrend, Henry, active 1881-1893.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The communicability to man of diseases from animals used as food / by Henry Behrend. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    THE COMMUNICABILITY TO MAN OF DISEASES FROM ANIMALS USED AS FOOD. BY DE. HENEY BEHREND. [From the Jewish Chroniole, Novemher 12, 1880.] The question as to wliat diseases are communicable to man from diseased animals used as food is at present occupying the attention of physicians and physiologists in this country and on the Continent; and a variety of experiments are being carried out with a view to the solution of the numerous problems in- volved in this enquiry. A variety of causes has led to the necessity of arriving at a definite conclusion upon the subject with as little delay as is compatible with the difficulty and importance of the investigation—among which may be enumerated the increasing importation of foreign cattle, the extension of the system of sewage irrigation of land, the general acceptation of the germ theory of the causation of Epidemics, the certainty of the spread of typhoid and scarlet fevers by an improper milk supply, and an attempt to solve the problem of the relatively small death-rate of the Jewish, as compared with the general, popu- lation of Great Britain. Papers were read and a discussion held on the subject at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association at Cambridge during this summer, in the section of Public Health, under the presidency of Dr. Acland the Regius Professor of Medicine in the University of Oxford, and the following resolution was agreed to : That, in the opinion of this section, the subject of the communicability of disease to man by animals used by him as food, urgently demands careful enquiry, both in regard to the actual state of our knowledge thereon, and to the legislation which is desirable in connection therewith ; and that the Committee of Council of the Association be invited to appoint a Com- mittee for the purpose of reporting on this matter. From the care taken to provide the Jewish community with animal food free from communicable disease, the question has especial interest for them, and the following summary may be taken as conveying the present consensus of scientific opinion upon the subject. No doubt can of course arise as to the communicability of the class of dis- eases in infected cattle known as parasitic of which Trichinosis may be taken as a type. In these cases the parasite is simply transferred from the flesh of the beast to that of the man, in which it finds a congenial home, and in the process of its development, frequently produces fatal results. Trichinosis, until recently unknown in this country, is frequently met with ia Germany, owing to the