> On Sat, 18 Feb 2006, Alf Christophersen wrote, apropos the whale that
> died in the Thames recently:
>> I don't think I would eat the meat of that one. it's the same as
>> eating meat from suddenly dead pigs and oxes/cows, dying of some
>> diseases.
> Lucas Bridges would agree. His view was that bulk and blubber kept a dead
> whale too warm for too long, so that it putrified quickly and would be
> toxic before you found it. Eating beached whales, he reports, was a
> known cause of death among the natives of Tierra del Fuego. He is also
> interesting on such culinary delights as guanaco brains, and the use of
> seal gall in infant nutrition. If you want to know more, seek out his
> "Uttermost Part of the Earth".

Which has been reprinted, but look around for the 1960ish Readers'
Union book club edition, still quite common in charity shops in the
UK; they didn't reprint the photos in the paperback and they add
a lot.

The Fuegians had worse problems than food poisoning.

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