slightest bit of egg.
On one occasion this person was induced to eat a small morsel of cake
on the statement that it contained no egg, and, although fully
believing the words of his host, he subsequently developed prominent
symptoms, due to the trace of egg that was really in the cake. A letter
from a distinguished litterateur to Sir Morell Mackenzie gives a
striking example of the idiosyncrasy to eggs transmitted through four
generations. Being from such a reliable source, it has been deemed
advisable to quote the account in full: "My daughter tells me that you
are interested in the ill-effects which the eating of eggs has upon
her, upon me, and upon my father before us. I believe my grandfather,
as well as my father, could not eat eggs with impunity. As to my father
himself, he is nearly eighty years old; he has not touched an egg since
he was a young man; he can, therefore, give no precise or reliable
account of the symptoms the eating of eggs produce in him. But it was
not the mere 'stomach-ache' that ensued, but much more immediate and
alarming disturbances. As for me, the peculiarity was discovered when I
was a spoon-fed child. On several occasions it was noticed (that is my
mother's account) that I felt ill without apparent cause; afterward it
was recollected that a small part of a yolk of an egg had been given to
me. Eclaircissement came immediately after taking a single spoonful of
egg. I fell into such an alarming state that the doctor was sent for.
The effect seems to have been just the same that it produces upon my
daughter now,--something that suggested brain-congestion and
convulsions. From time to time, as a boy and a young man, I have eaten
an egg by way of trying it again, but always with the same result--a
feeling that I had been poisoned; and yet all the while I liked eggs.
Then I never touched them for years. Later I tried again, and I find
the ill-effects are gradually wearing off. With my daughter it is
different; she, I think, becomes more susceptible as time goes on, and
the effect upon her is more violent than in my case at any time.
Sometimes an egg has been put with coffee unknown to her, and she has
been seen immediately afterward with her face alarmingly changed--eyes
swollen and wild, the face crimson, the look of apoplexy. This is her
own account: 'An egg in any form causes within a few minutes great
uneasiness and restlessness, the throat becomes contracted and painful,
the face crimson, a