PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 729 



should be removed. All slaughtering premises should be kept thoroughly cleansed from 

 blood and offal, and no carcasses be allowed to hang in view. No animal should be permitted 

 to witness the death of another. Trifling as these measures may appear to the professional 

 butcher, they are in reality of vast importance, not only in view of avoiding useless cruelty, 

 but as affecting the wholesomeness of meat for food, and the market value of the animal 

 slaughtered ; there being no question as to the effects of torture, cruelty, and fear upon the 

 secretions, and, if upon the secretions, necessarily upon the flesh. 



Methods. The slaughtering of animals for food at the present day may be classified 

 under three methods: 1. Rendering the animal insensible by a blow on the head, followed by 

 bleeding. 2. Cutting through or injuring the spinal cord (pithing), so as to destroy the 

 powers of motion and sensation, with subsequent bleeding. 3. Cutting the throat, deeply 

 dividing all the blood vessels, with or without thrusting the knife into the heart, and without 

 previously stunning the animal. This last method is practiced by the Jews. 



From certain experiments conducted for the purpose a few years since in the abattoirs 

 of Paris, it would seem that the first of these methods, namely, that of producing insensibility 

 by some sudden shock to the brain, such as that of a direct and concentrated blow, especially 

 if followed by immediate blood-letting, is attended by less suffering than when death is 

 effected by decapitation, pithing, or cutting the throat without previously producing such 

 insensibility. 



A German observer (Dr. Sondermann, of Munich) remarks upon this subject: &quot;All 

 methods of slaughtering have for their object the death of the animal in a more or less speedy, 

 but always in the least painful manner possible. But what is death? and when does actual 

 death occur? Simple as these two questions may appear, they are nevertheless very difficult 

 to answer. A mammal whose head has been cut off by a guillotine does not die immediately. 

 Actual death occurs some seconds or minutes afterwards. All methods of slaughtering, other 

 than the one in which insensibility is produced by a severe shock to the brain, followed by 

 bleeding, produce, without exception, only apparent death, after which follows the actual 

 death, the latter being always accompanied with an entire cessation of nervous and muscular 

 excitability.&quot; 



Yoluntary and Involuntary Motion. There are two kinds of motion. The one 

 is voluntary, and dependent upon the brain. So long as this organ remains unimpaired, so 

 long will consciousness, sensation, and the power of voluntary motion continue. The other is 

 involuntary, and dependent upon the action of the spinal cord as a nervous centre, and is 

 known as reflex action. This kind of motion is exhibited in the movements of animals after 

 decapitation, where all connection with the brain, and conseauently with consciousness, has 

 been cut off. 



So intimately connected in our minds are pain and action, that in witnessing the 

 slaughter of two animals we are naturally inclined to attribute the greatest amount of suffer 

 ing to the one that at the time of death exhibits the most violent convulsions. In such a 

 conjecture, however, we may be very much mistaken, for it is possible, nay, even probable, 

 that there may be acute suffering with scarcely a struggle on the part of the animal; while, 

 on the other hand, there may be much struggling, and even distortions, without pain or 

 sensations of any kind, as is often made evident in cases of decapitation where, as we have 

 just remarked, all connection with the brain has been removed. 



Thus we see that the movements of an animal in the act of being killed are not at all to 

 be relied upon as evidences of pain. 



Pithing. The term &quot;pithing &quot;is applied to two methods of inflicting injury to the 

 nervous system, and thereby producing death. By one method, that most commonly in 

 vogue, the spinal cord is severed or punctured between the first and second bones of the neck, 

 VOL. II. 39 



