DISEASES OF ANIMALS. 26 



hence the importance of pure air for healthy meat. Any. 

 thing that tends to make animals unhealthy, tends also 

 to render their flesh unwholesome. 



Animals are always unwholesome in the season in 

 which they propagate their species. Hence the wisdom 

 of that church which substitutes fish for flesh during a 

 part of the spring months. 



Even the heal of summer, in middle climates, renders 

 their flesh unwholesome. Hence the propriety of living 

 mostly on vegetable food, with a small portion of salted 

 meat, during the summer and early part of autumn. 



Animals sometimes become so fat that they cannot see, 

 and for weeks or months before their death, cannot get 

 up without help. Such have the fat disease, that would 

 soon destroy them ; but they are saved from waste by being 

 killed and eaten. Some animals are kept in filth and 

 foul exhalations, and are fed on the most nasty and 

 putrid vegetable and animal matter, taking no exercise, 

 and are thus fatted without a breath of fresh air, or a 

 mouthful of pure food. This course would soon termi- 

 nate their existence, but the butcher's knife kindly saves 

 them from a lingering death, and they are sold in the 

 market, and eaten by the purchaser, who is unconscious 

 that death is in the pot. 



Some persons are so great epicures that they only wish 

 to feast on those fat meats that the man of common sense 

 would pronounce fit only to aid in the composition of 

 soap. They seem to live merely for the sake of eating, 

 but they defeat their own purpose, by living too highly, 

 and feasting on meats so rich and unwholesome that 

 their career is as short as it is inglorious. 



In and about cities there is a vast amount of filth, fit 

 only for manure, that is converted into food for man ; 

 and with so little change, that the meat produced from 

 it engenders disease and death. To insure life and 

 health, an animal, as well as man, should have pure 

 air, pure food and exercise ; and any deviation from 

 these rules produces disease, and those who eat diseased 

 matter, animal or vegetable, violate nature's laws, and 

 must, sooner or later, pay the sad penalty annexed to 

 the transgression; no matter whether they do it from 

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