Show PTOMAINE POISONING What It Is and How It Can Be Gen Generally Generally Generally Avoided What To Eat Few people understand what ptomaine ptomaine lo maine poisoning Is Many sudden and otherwise local epidemics are often attributed to It when per perhaps perhaps perhaps haps they may be due to some other and unknown origin Ptomaine poison poisoning poisonIng ing lug Is a form of bacterial action which Is just now beginning to be reduced to very scientific knowledge by the ac accumulating accumulating accumulating cumulating Investigations of students of ot bacteriology Of all articles of food canned goods if properly prepared are about the safest from the action of the bugs that make the Yet they have long been popularly believed to tobe tobe tobe be the most dangerous And the die rea rca reason reason son when one comes to think about ab ut it itIs ItIs itIs Is fairly obvious The canned goods are generally prepared from fresh ma material material used before there Is la an opportunity opportunity opportunity for decomposition to reach the danger point and they are further freed from danger of bacterial action by careful sterilization And If these safeguards af gUardS have proved Insufficient tn as asin asIn I in rare instances they do there remains method a by which the consumer can cantell cantell tell whether or not the contents of ot a I given can can are perfectly wholesome Merely inspect the can and If the busy bacteria are within you may be sure that they will ivill have been at work and that their labor will have produced gases which in turn will have affected the shape of the can If its ends bulge ever so slightly dont buy It But if it the ends of the can are concave the contents are quite safe and sane Eane to borrow the slogan of recent campaign orators Once the can is opened how however however however ever the contents cont are perhaps more subject to bacterial attack than tian t an most other food be and must be kept very carefully and eaten as soon as possible The word ptomaine has a somewhat startling significance going back to the Greek word for corpse the first having been discovered In dead bodies The name was suggested in the early eighties by an Italian scientist some years after atter the first ex exact exact exact act knowledge had been attained of what the substance actually was that for centuries had been causing such disastrous results to human beings who accidentally came In contact with It The first experimental study of the effect produced upon animals by the eating of ot unwholesome flesh was car ned on only years ago when the famous physiologist t Albert von Haller Hailer began the present widespread work In one of the most minutely difficult of all scientific researches and though al already already already ready it Is 13 said that the time Is not far distant when the danger of ptomaine poisoning with its centuries long list of ot unsuspecting victims will be altogether er abolished there still remains from a scientific point of view a wide vide field of investigation for the labors of future generations of scientists Food poisoning may be caused in various ways the most common cases being those of meat sausage fish milk and cheese poisoning through ba action producing These bac bacterial bacterial bacterial changes usually take place in the flesh before it Is cured or cooked Dur During During DurIng ing this time the bacteria which act by attacking the nitrogenous portions Jf t f the food and breaking it up into other substances some of ot which are poisonous complete their work so s thor thoroughly thoroughly thoroughly that even the heat of an oven or frying pan Is insufficient to destroy their newly acquired poisonous quaIl qualities qualities ties Such changes ch take place with great rapidity and are almost impossible to detect in their first stages Later the decomposition is accompanied by bya a characteristic odor but the tile food may have become dangerous before the tell telltale telltale telltale tale evidences are noticeable 4 |