Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 5, 1881

No. 354.
Sir Edward Thornton to Mr. Evarts.

Washington, March 7, 1881. (Received March 7.)

Sir: With reference to your note of to-day’s date I have the honor to inform you that the statement to which you refer, concerning the mortality among swine, mast have arisen from a report which was made on the 21st of December last by Mr. Crump, then acting consul at Philadelphia, copy of an extract from which is inclosed, and which was published at London in the Times of the 19th ultimo.

You will perceive that it refers to Illinois and not to Ohio. I have already made inquiry upon the subject by telegraph of Her Majesty’s consul at Philadelphia, who has informed me by the same means that the statement was made upon good authority; but I expect to receive a further report from him to-morrow.

I have, &c.,

EDW’D THORNTON.

[Inclosure.]

Extract from Mr. Crump’s report on swine disease, December 21, 1880.

From a sanitary point of view it may not be impertinent to call your lordship’s attention to the immense mortality among swine by a disease known as “hog cholera,” of which about 700,000 head have died this year in Illinois. Immense quantities of pork are annually shipped to the United Kingdom, and as the disease, trichina spiralis, seems to be on the increase, the subject is not unworthy of attention. Two persons recently died in Milwaukee and one in Chicago. In the latter city several persons are ill with it at the present time, and one entire family attacked about a month ago are not yet out of danger. A case just reported from Kansas describes the symptoms of the disease when it attacks the human family. In this case the victim is a farmer. He had been ill for some time and became much reduced in flesh. Upon consulting a physician, trichinæ were found; worms were in his flesh by the millions, being scraped and squeezed from the pores of the skin. They are felt creeping through his flesh, and are literally eating up his substance. The disease is thought to have been contracted by eating sausages.

Trichina spiralis may be conveyed to human beings, it is thought, by gross adulteration used in the manufacture of butter and cheese, of which there is some exporation to England. The former is adulterated with lard and grease, which, in many cases, are taken from the places where hogs die of disease and then rendered into grease, glue, &c., and the latter by a commodity called “antihuff.”