A CASE OF APPARENT FOOD-POISONING OF THE TYPE KNOWN AS BOTULISM OR ALLANTIASIS

Abstract

Food-poisoning of a narcotic type must be rare as compared with the form familiarly associated with the term ptomain. Intense pain, violent vomiting, and exhausting diarrhea—frequently attended with high fever—are the usual symptoms. Strongly contrasted with these relatively common cases are those in which there is little or no pain, no significant temperature, but a profound complex of disturbances affecting the higher nerve-centers. In a few instances a picture like this has been observed where the offending food was the mussel, a molluse believed to develop a specific poison, mytilotoxin, under the influence of certain organisms. Sausage-poisoning, botulism, or allantiasis is another intoxication following the eating of protein food decomposed by Bacillus botulinus . A few hundred cases have been recorded with mortality approaching 40 per cent. Sausage has been the cause of the great majority, but other articles of diet have been implicated. The following personal experience may be worth