TYPE E BOTULISM: A HAZARD OF THE NORTH

• Main Author: Claude E. Dolman
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Kenzie; Stefansson; eskimo*; White whale
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.561.748; http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic13-4-230.pdf

I N 1908, on returning after two years ’ absence to the head of the Mac- kenzie Delta, the explorer Stefansson (1929) learned that many of his Eskimo acquaintances were dead, including a group of eight “poisoned by eating the meat of a freshly killed white whale. ” Calamities of that sort were familiar to whalers and attributed by them to ptomaine poisoning; but Stefansson concluded this could scarcely be the cause, as he had seen tons of semi-decayed whale meat eaten without harm. He appears to have been the first to suggest that these mysterious fatalities might be due to trichinosis (Stefansson 1914). Twenty years later, Parnell (1934) also referred to “deaths of whole families which are periodically reported among the Eskimos. ” These were “always ascribed to ‘ptomaine poisoning’: without, however, any real evidence. ” Apparently unaware of Stefansson’s prediction, Parnell specu-lated that the “Trichina worm”, whose presence he had noted in arctic foxes and polar bears in the eastern Canadian Arctic, could be responsible for such deaths. These conjectures were later rendered plausible by parasite