UTILISATION OF RIVER PLATE BEEF. 127 



represents a corresponding amount of force ; and so long 

 as an equilibrium is maintained between the food taken 

 and the effort made or force expended within the reason- 

 able capacity of the animal, organisation is perfect, and a 

 sort of statu quo is maintained in the state of the system. 

 If a moderate excess of food is taken (over and above the 

 force expended) and digested, the substance of the body — 

 perfectly organised substance — is augmented ; and in 

 either case the meat is sound and wholesome ; but in the 

 latter instance the nutritive matter in the flesh bears a 

 higher relative proportion to the fibrous portion of the 

 meat, and the quality of the meat, as food, is better. 



In the case of an excess of effort or expenditure of 

 power or force over the food taken, e^-fs^in^— previously 

 effected — organism is destroyed ; that is, decomposition 

 of organised matter takes place. It is notorious that 

 from this cause the meat supplied to the markets grows 

 bad, as a rule, in a few hours, and cannot be used on the 

 second day. I have frequently known it unapproachable 

 in eight or twelve hours, whereas I have killed my own 

 meat, in good condition — -descansado — in the country at 

 midsummer, and have eaten it on the fifth day perfectly 

 good— better, indeed, than on the first day — with the 

 thermometer in the corridor outside of the dining-room 

 standing at 100° Fahr. 



I have stated that meat in the state of decomposition is 

 not fit to enter into the human organism. Meat, the 

 organism of which is in part destroyed or decomposed, 

 taken as food is prejudicial to health. Absorbed into the 

 blood, it contaminates it, its oxidation becomes imperfect, 

 and fevers and other disorders are the result. When 

 poor and unwholesome diets are more or less general,' low 

 and putrescent fevers prevail, and epidemics are common ; 

 and from food, vegetable or animal, that is imperfectly 



