Trichinosis

Trichinosis is not an everyday illness. It arises when the larvae of a tiny roundworm — Trichinella spiralis — enter your body through raw or insufficiently heated pork. They do not stay in the intestine. They bore through the intestinal wall, travel onward through the blood, and eventually embed themselves where your body is most active: in your musculature. In some cases, even into your nervous system. The first signs are fever, swelling, burning muscle pain, an exhaustion that gnaws at the bones, and often allergic reactions, because your immune system is fighting something that has lodged itself in your very apparatus of movement.