30 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: 



change, and reeking hot from the distilleries. This slush, moreover, after the 

 ceremony of straining through the organs of sickly Cows, as before stated, and 

 duly colored and diluted and medicated, is sold to the citizens at an annual ex- 

 pense of more than a million dollars. The amount of disease and death conse- 

 quent upon the sale and use of this milk, is doubtless recorded in the books of fi- 

 nal judgment, and will hereafter be revealed. But the fact which chiefly con- 

 cerns the public is, that this milk has been, and, it is believed, is now, extensive- 

 ly injurious and fatal to health and life." .... 



" The Cow is an herbivorous and a ruminating animal ; pasturage, of course, 

 or gramineous matter, is its natural and appropriate aliment. 



" Reasoning a priori from the physical formation of the Cow, as it is a rumina- 

 ting animal, it were easy to demonstrate that its digestive organs are peculiarly 

 adapted, and were designed by Nature, for solid food ; and, consequently, that dis- 

 tillery slop and food of that description is the most unnatural aliment which it 

 can receive into its stomach. 



" The digestive organs of the ruminant class, such as the Cow and sheep, are 

 more complicated than those of any other animals. In the first place, they have 

 cutting or incisor teeth which are admirably adapted for cropping grass or pastur- 

 age. The upper external portion of these teeth is convex, rising straight from 

 the gum ; while inward they have a concave surface, gradually diminishing in 

 thickness, and terminating in a sharp edge which is covered with enamel, so as 

 to produce and retain the sharpness necessary for separating herbaceous sub- 

 stances. They have also large molares, or grinding teeth, fitted for comminuting 

 grassy fibres, or food which requires long and difiicult mastication, in order that 

 the nourishment may be extracted from it ; and for this purpose we find the 

 enamel, or harder portions of the teeth, distributed over and throughout their 

 texture. Besides this, they have large salivary glands, for the purpose of moist- 

 ening and lubricating the food preparatory to swallowing, and to aid in the sec- 

 ond process of mastication, during which the food is reduced to a pultaceous state ; 

 while, in carnivorous animals, these glands are either wanting, or of a much 

 smaller size." .... 



" One of the most notorious of the overgrown metropolitan milk-establish- 

 ments, or rather the largest collection of slop-dairies — for there are many propri- 

 etors — is situated in the western suburbs of the city, near the termination, and 

 between Fifteenth and Sixteenth streets, in New- York. The area occupied by 

 the concern includes the greater part of two squares, extending from below the 

 Ninth Avenue to the Hudson River, probably a distance of one thousand feet. — 

 During the winter season, about two thousand Cows are said to be kept on the 

 premises, but in summer the number is considerably reduced. The food of the 

 Cows, of course, is slop, which being drawn off into large tanks, elevated some 

 ten or fifteen feet, is thence conducted in close, square wooden gutters, and dis- 

 tributed to the different cow-pens, where it is received into triangular troughs, 

 rudely constructed by the junction of two boards. The range of the pens being 

 interrupted by the intersection of the Tenth-avenue, the slop is conveyed by 

 means of a gutter underground to the opposite side of the road, where it is re- 

 ceived into a capacious reservoir, and thence conducted to the pens, which extend 

 to the margin of the river. In the vicinity of Brooklyn there is a similar estab- 

 lishment, which contains about seven hundred Cows ; and in the neighborhood of 

 that city and of New- York there are numerous smaller concerns, where the cat- 

 tle are fed in like manner, by receiving the slop smoking hot directly from the 

 distilleries. In the far greater number of cases, however, the dairies are too far 

 from the distilleries to be supplied in this way. The slop is therefore carted in 

 vast quantities from the distilleries, in hogsheads, to the smaller milk estabLih- 

 ments, which are numerously scattered in the suburbs and neighborhoods of the 

 cities to the distance of several miles.* 



* Since the above was written, the author revisited some of the slop-milk manufhctoriea in New- York, 

 Brooklyn, Williamsburgh. Bushwick, the Wallabout, and vicinities, for the purpose of information. He 

 learned that, at some of the establishments in these places, an unusual mortality had recently occurred 

 among the milch Cows. The fact itself was indisputable ; but owing to the unwillingness, not to say inci- 

 vility, of the persons who supposed it was their interest to conceal the truth, nothing very definite in rela- 

 tion to the nature and extent of the disease was obtained. Some of the distilleries, we observed, had been 

 enlarged, and others were undergoing repairs, which, occasioning a temporary failure of slop, the dairymen 

 were cnrtin^it across the East River fl )m New-York, for the supply of their cattle. The slop concerns and 

 distilleries, though somewhat improved in appearance since public attention had been directed to them 



