THE DANGER OF INFECTION FROM MEAT
It has always been conceded that by eating raw or underdone beef or pork one may acquire tape worms; and that in eating raw or underdone pork one runs the same risk of contracting that uncurable malady, trichinosis. The danger from these sources, however, is comparatively slight, since most people eat their meat well cooked; but in the view of many modern scientists all meat eaters are open to a particular form of germ infection which involves all kinds of meat, fish, flesh and fowl, cooked as well as uncooked.
Everybody knows how readily meats of all kinds, and particularly seafood, such as fish, oysters and clams, undergo putrefaction. The processes of decay in fish and animals begin within an hour or two after death, under the influence of putrefactive bacteria, which are always present in the colon, or large intestine of animals, upon the skin and in the atmosphere about them. Ordinary cooking does not destroy them, for they are able to stand the ordinary cooking temperature. Salt and smoked fish, and other meats have these germs present in vast multitudes; and beef and game that is “hung” for a long time in order to become “tender,” are so far advanced in decay before they are brought to the table that every minute particle of them is alive with these germs.
These facts are granted by all; but the physiologist who favors the use of meat, says that unless excessive quantities are consumed, the healthy person undergoes little risk. The argument is, that when the germs are swallowed into the stomach they are there destroyed by the action of the gastric juice, which is germicidal; but experiments have lately proved that some of these germs escape destruction by the gastric juice, and find their way to the colon, where they continue to multiply in the mucous which covers the intestinal wall, and thus maintain constant and active putrefactive processes in that part of the body.