The Chemistry of Cookery

by W. Mattieu Williams

This general germ theory of disease has been recently questioned by some men whose conclusions demand respect. Dr. B. W. Richardson stoutly opposes it, and in the particular instance of the ‘comma-shaped’ bacillus, so firmly described as the origin of cholera, the refutation is apparently complete.

The alternative hypothesis is that the class of diseases in question are caused by a chemical poison, not necessarily organised as a plant or animal, and therefore not to be found by the microscope.

I speak the more feelingly on this subject, having very recently had painful experience of it. One of my sons went for a holiday to a farm-house in Shropshire, where many happy and health-giving holidays have been spent by all the members of my family. At the end of two or three weeks he was attacked by scarlet fever, and suffered severely. He afterwards learned that the cowboy had been ill, and further inquiry proved that his illness was scarlet fever, though not acknowledged to be such; that he had milked before the scaling of the skin that follows the eruption could have been completed, and it was therefore most probable that some of the scales from his hands fell into the milk. My son drank freely of uncooked milk, the other inmates of the farm drinking home-brewed beer, and only taking milk in tea or coffee hot enough to destroy the vitality of fever germs. He alone suffered. This infection was the more remarkable, inasmuch as a few months previously he had been assisting a medical man in a crowded part of London where scarlet fever was prevalent, and had come into frequent contact with patients in different stages of the disease without suffering infection.

Had the milk from this farm been sent to London in the usual manner in cans, and the contents of these particular cans mixed with those of the rest received by the vendor, the whole of his stock might have been infected. As some thousands of farms contribute to the supplying of London with milk, the risk of such contact with infected hands occurring occasionally in one or another of them is very great, and fully justifies me in urgently recommending the manager of every household to strictly enforce the boiling of every drop of milk that enters the house. At the temperature of 212° the vitality of all dangerous germs is destroyed, and the boiling point of milk is a little above 212°. The temperature of tea or coffee, as ordinarily used, may do it, but is not to be relied upon. I need only refer generally to the cases of wholesale infection that have recently been traced to the milk of particular dairies, as the particulars are familiar to all who read the newspapers.

The necessity for boiling remains the same, whether we accept the germ theory or that of chemical poison, as such poison must be of organic origin, and, like other similar organic compounds, subject to dissociation or other alteration when heated to the boiling point of water.

It is an open question whether butter may or may not act as a dangerous carrier of such germs; whether they rise with the cream, survive the churning, and flourish among the fat. The subject is of vital importance, and yet, in spite of the research fund of the Royal Society, the British Association, &c., we have no data upon which to base even an approximately sound conclusion.

We may theorise, of course; we may suppose that the bacteria, bacilli, &c., which we see under the microscope to be continually wriggling about or driving along are doing so in order to obtain fresh food from the surrounding liquid, and therefore that if imprisoned in butter they would languish and die. We may point to the analogies of ferment germs which demand nitrogenous matter, and therefore suppose that the pestiferous wanderers cannot live upon a mere hydro-carbon like butter. On the other hand, we know that the germs of such things can remain dormant under conditions that are fatal to their parents, and develop forthwith when released and brought into new surroundings. These speculations are interesting enough, but in such a matter of life and death to ourselves and our children we require positive facts—direct microscopic or chemical evidence.

In the meantime the doubt is highly favourable to ‘bosch.’ To illustrate this, let us suppose the case of a cow grazing on a sewage-farm, manured from a district on which enteric fever has existed. The cow lies down, and its teats are soiled with liquid containing the chemical poison or the germs which are so fearfully malignant when taken internally. In the course of milking a thousandth part of a grain of the infected matter containing a few hundred germs enters the milk, and these germs increase and multiply. The cream that rises carries some of them with it, and they are thus in the butter, either dead or alive—we know not which, but have to accept the risk.

Now, take the case of ‘bosch.’ The cow is slaughtered. The waste fat—that before the days of palm oil and vaseline was sold for lubricating machinery—is skilfully prepared, made up into 2 lb. rolls, delicately wrapped in special muslin, or prettily moulded and fitted into ‘Normandy’ baskets. What is the risk in eating this?

None at all provided always the ‘bosch’ is not adulterated with cream-butter. The special disease germs do not survive the chemistry of digestion, do not pass through the glandular tissues of the follicles that secrete the living fat, and therefore, even though the cow should have fed on sewage grass, moistened with infected sewage water, its fat would not be poisoned.