Given the ubiquity of botulinum spores in the environment, it is surprising that outbreaks were not more frequent. When introduced into an optimal, low-oxygen environment-like the inside of a jar or can of food-spores germinate and make the toxin. Laboratory tests demonstrated that spores are durable: they withstand even boiling. Under very specific growth conditions, the active form of the bacterium could be coaxed to grow and produce toxin under other conditions, the bacterium would retreat into a dormant, or spore form that does not do so.Įarly 20th century researchers found Clostridium botulinum spores nearly anywhere: in soil, rivers, lakes, oceans, on vegetable surfaces, and in fish and animal intestines. He confirmed that Kerner’s mysterious sausage-or ham-poison was made by a microbe. In 1895, Émile van Ermengem isolated a spore-forming bacterium from the remnants of a salted ham that killed three musicians in a Belgian outbreak. This changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as science moved from the laboratory into the kitchen. In 1870, another German physician renamed the illness “botulism” after the Latin word “botulus,” or sausage.įor centuries, people dried, smoked, fermented, canned, and neglected their food, naïve to the microbial threat festering within. Grateful citizens dubbed the scientist “Wurst-Kerner,” for his pioneering contributions to public health and sausagery.
Brazenly, he sampled a few drops of this extract himself-he survived, though it caused a “great drying out of the palate and pharynx,” a harbinger of Botox’s modern application in treating uncontrollable salivation for those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Muscle weakness leading to drooped eye lids, difficulty swallowing, and respiratory failure altered autonomic nerve function leading to vomiting, pupil dilation, and dry mouth. He fed extracts of these “sour” sausages to animals and described the classic symptoms of botulism. He analyzed more than 200 cases of suspected sausage poisoning. In the 1820s, a young German physician named Justinus Kerner was the first scientist to publish an accurate and comprehensive description of the disease. Officials in Stuttgart saw an increase in “sausage poisoning” in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, possibly due to poor sanitation and widespread poverty. But before botulinum toxin became a bioweapon and a smoother of crow's feet as the drug Botox, botulism was historically a foodborne malady, and the toxin lurked in sausage and cured meats.īotulism, the illness caused by toxin exposure, first received scientific attention in rural Germany in the late 18th century. First weaponized by Imperial Japan in the 1930s, and later, Nazi Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, a single gram of toxin could theoretically kill more than a million people if dispersed into the air and inhaled. Before botulinum toxin became a bioweapon and a smoother of crow's feet as the drug Botox, botulism was historically a foodborne malady.īotulinum toxin, a protein produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, could be “the most poisonous poison” there is, as writer Carl Lamanna called it in an article for Science, in 1959. All told, the hospital bill topped their bar tab-more than $500,000 in fees alone, not including added expenses for transportation, security, and public health investigation. But recovery from botulism takes weeks to months the body must regrow new nerve endings to replace the poisoned ones. All eight victims received an experimental antitoxin from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and thanks to meticulous supportive care, none died. Three of the men required a breathing tube and ventilator to prevent suffocation. Within hours of the first swig, botulinum toxin infiltrated the prisoners’ nerve cells, causing weakness and paralysis. Investigators traced botulism spores to the humble spud. After days of fermentation and anticipation, the brewer filtered the mash through a sock, and then doled out the hooch to his fellow yardbirds.
For the pièce de résistance, he added a baked potato filched from a meal tray weeks earlier and peeled with his fingernails. In secret, a prison moonshiner mixed grapefruit, oranges, powdered drink mix, canned fruit, and water in a plastic bag. Tests confirmed that the detainees came down with botulism from their cellblock science experiment. Their buzz faded into double vision, weakness, trouble swallowing, and vomiting. After tanking up on “pruno,” a bootleg prison wine, eight maximum-security inmates at the Utah State prison in Salt Lake County tried to shake off more than just the average hangover.