nd the veins swollen. These symptoms have been so
severe as to suggest that serious consequences might follow.' To this I
may add that in her experience and my own, the newer the egg, the worse
the consequences."

Hutchinson speaks of a Member of Parliament who had an idiosyncrasy as
regards parsley. After the ingestion of this herb in food he always had
alarming attacks of sickness and pain in the abdomen, attended by
swelling of the tongue and lips and lividity of the face. This same man
could not take the smallest quantity of honey, and certain kinds of
fruit always poisoned him. There was a collection of instances of
idiosyncrasy in the British Medical Journal, 1859, which will be
briefly given in the following lines: One patient could not eat rice in
any shape without extreme distress. From the description given of his
symptoms, spasmodic asthma seemed to be the cause of his discomfort. On
one occasion when at a dinner-party he felt the symptoms of
rice-poisoning come on, and, although he had partaken of no dish
ostensibly containing rice, was, as usual, obliged to retire from the
table. Upon investigation it appeared that some white soup with which
he had commenced his meal had been thickened with ground rice. As in
the preceding case there was another gentleman who could not eat rice
without a sense of suffocation. On one occasion he took lunch with a
friend in chambers, partaking only of simple bread and cheese and
bottled beer. On being seized with the usual symptoms of rice-poisoning
he informed his friend of his peculiarity of constitution, and the
symptoms were explained by the fact that a few grains of rice had been
put into each bottle of beer for the purpose of exciting a secondary
fermentation. The same author speaks of a gentleman under treatment for
stricture who could not eat figs without experiencing the most
unpleasant formication of the palate and fauces. The fine dust from
split peas caused the same sensation, accompanied with running at the
nose; it was found that the father of the patient suffered from
hay-fever in certain seasons. He also says a certain young lady after
eating eggs suffered from swelling of the tongue and throat,
accompanied by "alarming illness," and there is recorded in the same
paragraph a history of another young girl in whom the ingestion of
honey, and especially honey-comb, produced swelling of the tongue,
frothing of the mouth, and blueness of the fingers. The authors k