The use of iron in the control of cottonseed meal poisoning

The chemical investigations have been made with a view to determining the character of the toxic principle and the various extracts have been examined as to their compositions and toxicity. The symptoms of sick animals and the post-mortem examinations of those that have died from cotton-seed meal poisoning have been extensively observed, and a large number of feeding tests have been made with different mixtures and under different methods of feeding in an effort to get a clue to the nature of the poison and to devise some practical way of preventing it. The difficulty has been ascribed to the oils, the lint, to a toxalbumin or toxicalkaloid, to chlorin and betain, to the high protein content of cotton-seed meal, to decomposition products, to resin present in the meal, to a compound of phosphoric acid and to fungous diseases of cotton. Though the work on this subject has been very extensive, the cause and nature of the toxicity of different lots of meal have served to make the problem more difficult. For some time it has been agreed that by certain methods of treatment, such as fermenting the cotton-seed meal before feeding and by heating to a high temperature, the toxicity could be decreased, but no one was ever able to give a satisfactory remedy for the trouble until recently