Book Reviews

There are few subjects in Medicine on which there is so much loose thinking and writing as those dealt with in this volume by Dr Savage in a manner as informing as it is interesting. Apart from illness due to metallic contamination of the food, outbreaks of food poisoning are usually spoken of as due to ptomaine poisoning, a phrase that arose in pre-bacteriological days when the nitrogenous products of putrefaction were, perhaps naturally, regarded as the cause of the conditions set up after the ingestion of the incriminated foodstuff. In these days, when so many outbreaks of food poisoning have been bacteriologically investigated both at home and in foreign countries, there is no reason for the continued use of this phrase, which has come to be meaningless. The description by Giirtner of Jena, of the bacillus that has been called after him, and the discovery by many investigators of this bacillus, and of allied forms in the incriminated food-stuffs (usually brawn or other prepared food) as well