BIOLOGY. 295 



diseased meat is soft and watery, often like jelly or sodden 

 parchment. Again, the touch or feel of healthy meat is firm and 

 elastic, and it hardly moistens the fingers ; whereas that of dis- 

 eased meat is soft and wet — in fact, it is often so wet that the 

 serimi runs from it, and then it is technically called wet. Good 

 meat has but little odor, and this is not disagreeable ; whereas 

 diseased meat smells faint and cadaverous, and it often has the 

 odor of medicine. This is best observed by cutting it and smell- 

 ing the knife, or by pouring a little wamn water upon it. Good 

 meat will bear cooking without shrinking, and without losing 

 verymuch in weight ; but bad meat shrivels up, and it often boils 

 to pieces. All these effects are due to the jjresence of a large 

 proportion of serum in the meat, and to the relatively large 

 amount of intercellular or gelatinous tissue ; for the fat and true 

 muscular substance are to a gi-eater or less extent deficient. If, 

 therefore, 100 grains of the lean or muscular part of good meat 

 are cut up and dried at a temperature of boiling salt water (224° F.) , 

 they lose only from 69 to 74 grains of their weight ; but if diseased 

 meat is thus treated, it loses from 75 to 80 per cent, of its weight. 

 I find that the average loss of weight with sound and good beef is 

 72.3 per cent., and of mutton 71.5 jjer cent., whereas the average 

 loss of diseased beef is 76.1 percent., and of diseased mutton 78.2 

 per cent. Even if it be dried at a higher temperature, as at 206° F., 

 when all the moisture is expelled, and when good meat loses 

 from 74 to 80 per cent, of its weight, the proportion of loss in bad 

 meat is equally as great. Other characters, of a more refined 

 nature, will also serve to distinguish good from bad meat. The 

 juice or serosity of sound flesh is slightly acid, and it contains an 

 excess of potash salts, chiefly the phosphate ; whereas diseased 

 meat, from being infiltrated with the serum of blood, is often 

 alkaline, and the salts of soda, especially chloride and phosphate, 

 abound in it. Lastly, when good meat is examined under the 

 microscope, the fibre is clean and well defined, and free from 

 infusorial creatures; but that of diseased meat is sodden, as if it 

 had been soaked in water, and the transverse markings are indis- 

 tinct and far apart ; beside which, there are often minute organ- 

 isms, like infusorial bodies. These are very perceptible in the 

 flesh of animals affected with the cattle plague, and Dr. Beal has 

 described them as entozoa-like objects. They differ altogether 

 from the parasites which constitute the trichina disease, and the 

 measles of pork. How far the use of diseased meat aftects the 

 human constitution is unknown. In those cases where certain par- 

 asite diseases exist in animals, there is no doubt of its injurious 

 nature ; for the tape-worm, the trichina, and certain hydatid or 

 encysted growths are unquestionably jiroduced by it. Experience 

 also points to the fact that carbuncle and common boils are in some 

 degree referable to the use of the flesh of animals affected with 

 pleuro-pneumonia ; and occasionally we witness the most serious 

 diarrhoea and prostration of the vital powers after eating diseased 

 meat. It is, therefoi-e, safest to forbid its use ; and it is at all 

 times best to guard against the possibility of injury by having 

 meat well cooked. It should be so cooked that the very centre 



