Abstract
TO the Ancients, food-poisoning meant, as the name implies, the intentional adulteration of food with some deadly poison, and official food-tasters were still in vogue up to the Middle Ages. In the nineteenth century it was noticed that acute attacks of diarrhœa and vomiting followed the ingestion of certain foods, and the illness was blamed on ptomaines, the toxic alkaloids which are formed when foods are in an advanced stage of putrefaction. Later it became apparent that outbreaks of gastro-enteritis frequently followed the eating of apparently normal food, and just over half a century ago, when bacteriology was still in its infancy, Salmon, in the United States, and Gaertner, in Austria, showed that these alimentary upsets were due to certain bacteria (since called the Salmonella) and their toxins. About the same time van Ermengen, in Belgium, proved that the neuro-paralysis which frequently followed the eating of German sausage was due to the powerful toxin of an anaerobic sporing bacillus which he called B. botulinus, and the disease botulism. In the past fifty years much has been added to our knowledge of this type of food-poisoning, perhaps better called food infection or intoxication, and this knowledge has been collected and admirably arranged by Mr. Dewberry, together with sections on food-poisoning with metals, poisonous plants including the fungi, poisonous fish and shellfish, food allergy, and the contamination of food by war gases.
Food-Poisoning
Its Nature, History and Causation, Measures for its Prevention and Control. By Elliot B. Dewberry. Pp. viii + 187 + 17 plates. (London: Leonard Hill, Ltd., 1943.) 15s.
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CRUICKSHANK, R. Food-Poisoning. Nature 153, 418 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153418a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153418a0