26 AUGUST 1922, Page 3

The symptoms displayed by the victims in Scotland—double vision and

progressive paralysis, with diffioulty in.speaking and swallowing, all without any rise of temperature—correspond exactly, says Dr. Ledingham, to the symptoms of botulism as It has been -recorded in America. In America there have been some forty recorded outbreaks of botulism in three years. But the majority of the attacks were attributable not to potted meat but to tinned vegetables. The bacillus botulinus was traced directly to the Californian soil in which the vegetables had been grown. If the poisoning in Scotland was really a case of botulism it is, of course, entirely different from the ordinary instances of food poisoning, which are due to the falmonella group of bacilli allied to the paratyphoid group.