POISONING BY FUNGI, BACTERIA AND THEIR PRODUCTS IN FOOD.
Poisons in spoiled food: Moulds, rust, smut, bacteria, toxins. Action of moulds on rabbits, on alimentary and nervous systems. Smuts, ergots and their congeners. Tetanizing and paralyzing products. Duration of symptoms.
Food is usually spoiled by the growth of moulds, rust, smut, bacteria and the toxins which they produce.
Kaufman has experimented with moulds on rabbits. He found that aspergillus glaucus (green mould) grown on bread produces a fatal infection in the rabbit even in very minute doses (⅒ milligramme); that it will attain this in a neutral or even slightly acid medium as well as in an alkaline one; and that the spores retain this pathogenic activity for six months at ordinary temperatures. The aspergillus glaucus, penicillium glaucum, and mucor mucedo affect the intestinal organs only, while ascophora oidium aurantiacum affect the nervous system as well. The smuts (ustilago) and ergots (claviceps purpurea) vary considerably in their potency according to the conditions of their growth and the stage of their development, yet experiment has shown a special action on the vaso-motor nerves leading to nervous disorders, circulatory troubles, and trophic disease. In connection with ustilago maidis (corn smut) there are usually found bacteria, such as bacillus maidis and bacillus mesentericus fuscus, and the combined products of these and the ustilago have been studied by Lombroso, Dupre and Erba. These observers isolated a red oil with the tetanizing action of strychnia, and oleo-resinous substances having bases which they named maïsine and pellagrozeine, and which had a paralytic action on the nerve centres. Pellizi and Tirelli cultivated the bacteria of damaged maize and found that the sterilized cultures, introduced into rabbits hypodermically or intravenously caused muscular jerking, exaggeration of the reflexes, tetanic spasms and paralysis which lasted for fifteen days after the injection. This is exactly in line with the causation of contagious bacteridian diseases in which the ptomaines and toxins are, as a rule, the immediate pathogenic factors.