M 65
The usual domestic ice chest is not reliable as a means of preventing the multiplication of bacteria in food placed therein after it has been contaminated by dirty handling.
It is a good rule, especially in hot weather, to keep no flesh food over till next day, or so that it is not eaten until many hours after it has been cooked.
It is probable that many of the cases of acute diarrhoea which occur in the hot weather in the colony are due to the consumption of food which has acquired the power to cause disease through dirty handling.
During the year 1924 there occurred, however, an outbreak of Food-poisoning which appeared to belong to the second class of diseases mentioned above.
It was not found possible to demonstrate its presence with certainty, but enquiry pointed to the presence in the food of a substance known as Tyrotoxicon, a poisonous body allied to the so-called Ptomaines or animal alkaloids.
After eating tea-cakes at a restaurant, many people were seized with illness, of which abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhoea were the chief symptoms.
The degree of illness seems to have varied in different persons.
Rumour had it that over thirty people had been attacked.
Only two medical men reported cases, and even they showed a strange reluctance either to say how many patients they had or to give their names and addresses, or to give the name of the restaurant where the cakes were eaten.
On being personally interviewed, however, these medical men gave all the help they could give.
The manager of the restaurant gave all possible facilities for enquiries.
Fortunately, one of the medical men who reported cases had promptly obtained a few cakes from the same "baking" as those on which suspicion had fallen.
These he sent to the medical department, where they were subjected to chemical and bacteriological examination.
In the course of a few days, information was gathered from some half dozen other persons who had eaten of these cakes and been more or less similarly ill afterwards.