Handbook for Inspectors of Nuisances (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 Excerpt: ...made use of by the bird. In certain districts of North America, especially on the Alleghany Mountains, the flesh of all the cattle is poisonous, and so also is the milk they yield, and the cheese which is made from it. Oysters, mussels, lobsters, and crabs, have frequently caused disturbance of the human system; and the probability is that they were made unwholesome by the food which they had eaten. A singular case is recorded in the medical journals of France in 1842, where a whole family at Toulouse were poisoned by a dish of snails, the animals having been gathered from a poisonous shrub (Coriaria myrtifolid); and it is not at all uncommon for honey to be unwholesome, on account of its having been collected by bees from poisonous plants. The honey of Trebizond, for example, has long been notorious for its deleterious properties; it poisoned the soldiers of Xenophon during the famous retreat of the Ten Thousand. Pliny, too, speaks of it; and to this day its intoxicating effect is frequently witnessed. It arises, no doubt, from the plants, chiefly the Azalea pontica, from which the honey is gathered. Mr. Barton has given us a similar account of the poisonous quality of the honey gathered by bees from the savannahs of New Jersey, where the Calmia and Azalea are the principle flowering shrubs. As with the followers of Xenophon, all who eat of the honey become intoxicated to a high degree; and even when made into metheglin, it poisons all who partake of it, causing dimness of sight, giddiness, and then delirium, with sometimes a fatal termination. Occasionally, we have examples of food which is in itself poisonous. This is so with many of the fish of tropical seas, and especially of the West Indies. Putrid meat is, perhaps, wasteful, rather than actually inju...