176 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



SLAUGHTER-HOUSE CRUELTIES, PESTS, AND NUISANCES. 



Humanity condemns, in the strongest manner, those unheard-of 

 cruelties perpetrated on animals while killing them, in order to 

 render their meat less bloody, and more tender. To keep the feet 

 of calves and sheep tied together, in the most painful posture pos- 

 sible tumble them into carts on top of one another bang them 

 about as if they were so many boxes and barrels keep them for 

 days together without a morsel of food, and then, after all this liv- 

 ing death, to hang them up by the hind feet, puncture a vein in the 

 neck, and let them hang in this excruciating torture, faint from loss 

 of blood and struggling for life, yet enduring all the agonies of 

 death, for six or eight hours ; meanwhile pelting them, to beat 

 out the blood and render the meat tender, with might and main, so 

 that every blow extorts a horrid groan, till tardy death at length 

 ends their sufferings with their lives and all perpetrated on help- 

 less, unoffending brutes is a little worse than anything else except 

 human murder; yet it is but the legitimate fruits of flesh-eating. 

 Hear the piteous wail of these wretched animals, on their passage 

 from the farmyard to the slaughter-house ; see their upturned eyes 

 rolling in agony ; witness the desperate struggles, and hear the ter- 

 rible bellowings of the frantic bullock w r ho apprehends his fate, as 

 he is draw r n up to the fatal bull-ring ; or even look at the awful 

 expression of all amputated heads, as seen in market, or carried 

 through the streets, and then say whether the slaughtering of ani- 

 mals is not a perfect OUTRAGE on every feeling of humanity every 

 sentiment of right!" And yet all this is practised by great pro- 

 fessors of religion. Zealots ? What hypocrites ! 



In concluding this chapter on the digestive organs, I deem it not 

 irrelevant or out of place to advert to the common and injurious 

 effect of mercury in the stomach and system generally, which I will 

 do in the language of Dr. S. Chapman, of Philadelphia, late pro- 

 fessor in the Medical University there. When I delivered my 

 popular lectures in that city, the venerable old gentleman sent me, 

 through his son, his respects, and some of his writings, with a very 

 friendly invitation to visit him. 



THE USE OF. POISONS, CALOMEL, AND DEPLETIONS. 



The very principle upon which they act, is their destruction of 

 life. Taken in health, they induce sickness ; much more aggravate 

 it. And their reputation for curing diseases is due mainly to absti- 

 nence from food, perspiration, and emptying the stomach, all of 



