THE KOT. 377 



Of the treatment of rot Mr. Touatt continues : — " If it is 

 suited to the convenience of the farmer, and such ground 

 were at all within his reach, the sheep should he sent to a 

 salt-marsh in preference to the best pasture on the best farm. 

 There it will feed on the salt incrusted on the herbage, and 

 pervading the pores of every blade of grass. A healthy salt- 

 marsh permits not the sheep to become rotten which graze 

 upon it; and if the disease is not considerably advanced, it 

 cures those which are sent upon it with the rot, * * * Are 

 there any indications of fever, heated mouth, heaving flanks, 

 or failing appetite. Is the general inflammation beginning to 

 have a determination to that part on which the disease 

 usually expends its ohiefest virulence ? Is there yellowness of 

 of the lips and of the mouth, of the eyes and of the skin ? 

 At the same time are there no indications of weakness 

 and decay ? Kothing to show that the constitution is 

 fatally undermined? Bleed — abstract, according to the cir- 

 cumstances of the case, eight, ten, or twelve ounces of blood. 

 There is no disease of an inflammatory character at its com- 

 mencement, which is not benefited by early bleeding. To 

 this let a dose of physic succeed — two or three ounces of 

 Epsom salts, administered in the cautious manner so fre- 



the United States and in almost the only case "where I ever knew it to occur in my 

 vicinity, the seller — a very low man — was punished in exemplary damages by a jury 

 and received the soubriquet of '* Stinking Meat," which followed him through life. 

 The meat sold by him had no offensive odor ; its condition was not discovered until it 

 was partly consumed; nor was it then discovered by the taste or appe arance of the meat 

 — but by the information of a person privy to the facts. But it was proved that the 

 animal was aflfected by a disease usually mortal, and expected to prove mortal in the 

 present case. I have forgotten what the disease was. There might have been semo 

 color of proof that the meat proved unwholesome. Selling " unwholesome provi- 

 sions " is a misdemeanor at common law, and therefore indictable. And every 

 contract for provisions implies that they shall be wholesome. (See 3 Blackstone'a 

 Com., 165.) The vendor is bound to know they are sound and wholesome at his peril. 

 American courts and juries have ^iven an extensive construction to the term whole- 

 some, in this connection. In fact, if it can be proved that a person has sold meat knowing 

 that the animal, when killed, was laboring under any constitutional or serious malady, 

 or even that it was killed to anticipate death from unnatural and accidental causes — - 

 if there is any good reason to suppose those causes placed the meat in the situation of 

 that of a diseased animal — I say courts and juries under these circumstances demand 

 only colorable proof that the meat is uivioTiolesome to assess damages on the vendor. 

 Thus in Fonda w. Van Bracklin, the plaintiff recovered five dollars damages of the 

 defendant, for selling him a quarter of beef from a cow that " had eaten shorUy before 

 she was killed^ a very large quantity of peas and oats, and that was slaughtered 

 for fear she would die in consequence of her having eaten them."^ It was proved that 

 those who ate the beef " were generally made very sick and that one of Fonda's 

 servants was sick two weeks from eating it." The case was carried up to the 

 Supreme Court, &c., of the State of New York, and the judgment affirmed. I know 

 nothing about the parties, but infer from the amount of the verdict that they were 

 persons of low character, and that the proof of the subsequent illness of the persons 

 who eat the meat, was not much credited. In other words, I infer that the verdict was, 

 more than anything else, an expression that no man has a right to sell the meat' 

 of a diseased animal. The jury could not have believed that the meat produced 

 the alleged effects. Such a verdict could not have been founded on that 

 hypothesis. 



