This article doesn't talk about "wound botulism". This is most often found with injecting heroin users who inject into muscle not a vein.<p>For example, in the UK between 1980 and 2013 there were only 36 cases of food borne botulism, but 147 cases of wound botulism between 2000 and 2013.<p><a href="http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Botulism/Pages/Introduction.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Botulism/Pages/Introduction.asp...</a>
<i>"Brazenly, he sampled a few drops of this extract himself"</i>[1]<p>These days if a researcher dared confess that he tried some research compound on himself he'd be charged with loss of objectivity, or be considered crazy or just plain weird. But not too long ago self-experimentation by researchers was quite a common and accepted practice. It could even be considered the ethical thing to do: before letting the compound be tried by others you should of course try it yourself.<p>There's a book on the history of self-experimentation in medicine, called "Who Goes First?"[2]<p>[1] - "he" being Justinus Kerner, "the first scientist to publish an accurate and comprehensive description of the disease"<p>[2] - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Who-Goes-First-Self-Experimentation-Medicine/dp/0520212819/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Who-Goes-First-Self-Experimentation-M...</a>
Wow, didn't know that "nitrate free" really isn't nitrate free.<p>I use to make kimchi a lot. I wonder of the lactic acid produced by the bacteria on cabbage inhibits botulism growth?
I was curious about pruno, and found this poem on the way:<p><a href="http://www.pen.org/poetry/recipe-prison-pruno" rel="nofollow">http://www.pen.org/poetry/recipe-prison-pruno</a>
The article doesn't mention a "big" commercial botulism case. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bon_Vivant_botulism_case" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bon_Vivant_botulism_case</a><p>I put "big" in quotes because only one person died. But it caused quite the scare, people were afraid of eating canned soup. The company went bankrupt.<p>Not nearly as deadly as E. coli. E.g. in 1993, 732 people were infected and four died from undercooked hamburger at Jack In The Box.[1] And it continues. A quick google found an article that claims[2]<p><pre><code> approximately 100,000 illnesses,
3,000 hospitalizations,
and 90 deaths annually in the United States
</code></pre>
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Jack_in_the_Box_E._coli_outbreak" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Jack_in_the_Box_E._coli_o...</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.about-ecoli.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.about-ecoli.com/</a>
Dave Arnold's "Cooking Issues"[0] podcast is an excellent source of high quality information about all sorts of related food and kitchen equipment hacking.<p>He had a very interesting segment about the open source HACCP plan discussed in this article a couple of weeks ago. I highly recommend his stuff!<p>[0] <a href="http://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=4532.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=4532.html</a>
Hmmm just made some sauerkraut; I used the potato masher to mash it down, after mashing some potatoes. This article didn't help me not die of botulism if I do.
I'm not clicking the link since it's The Atlantic but and may they mentioned this in the article botulinum toxin is the most lethal thing in earth. It's staggering to know even plutonium or some nerve gas are not as powerful per gram as that little bacterium.