It is usually admitted that cases of botulism are rare in the territory of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, but this may be due to the fact that such cases often escape observation, being mistaken for other diseases. In 1890, Dr. Arustamov1noted that these cases of poisoning were diagnosed in small groups by physicians of Astrakhan but remained often unnoted in the literature. In available Russian literature for the last fifty years, cases have been recorded as shown in table 1. Table 2 tabulates the data in cases recorded by the sanitary-epidemiologic Department of Kharkov. Up to the present time, twelve outbreaks of botulism have been recorded in the territory of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. There were fifty-two cases of poisoning and thirty-five deaths. This gives a death rate of 67.3 per cent. The data of Anrep2are not considered here because he omitted