886 Professor Gamgce on Unwholesome Food. 



us look at the amylaceous and saccharine group of bodies, 

 starting with cane-sugar, in which we find twelve equivalents of 

 carbon, eleven of hydrogen, and eleven of oxygen. Professor 

 Miller gives a list of eighteen substances of this group, exhibit- 

 ing various elaborate combinations of a multiplicity of atoms 

 of the three elements. In other groups belonging to the 

 animal series, still greater complexity prevails, and as such 

 substances are built up in a great variety of ways, so there is 

 an equal variety in the modes in which they may be taken to 

 pieces, and a change of properties — sometimes a very striking 

 one — is found at every stage, whether of the ascending or 

 descending scale. Thus we can understand how putrefactions — 

 which are regulated modes of resolving complex bodies into 

 simpler forms — may, under different circumstances, afford very 

 different results. 



These reflexions will assist in explaining the great dangers 

 which result from animal food in an unsound condition. If 

 disease has changed the normal state of the particles, we may 

 be sure that the food is made mischievous, although we may 

 not, without experiment, be able to say to what extent any 

 particular individual may suffer from eating it. 



Professor Gamgee, in an important article on " Unwhole- 

 some Meat and Milk,* 8 * classifies the evils of bad animal food 

 under five heads, as produced by (1) Cadaveric venom and 

 animal poisons of undetermined nature, developed spontaneously 

 in health or disease. (2) Animal poisons well known from their 

 effects in creating specific contagious diseases. (3) Organic 

 poisons, the result of decomposition. (-1) Mineral and vegetable 

 poisons absorbed into the systems of animals, and which con- 

 taminate their flesh and milk. (5) Parasitic animals and vege- 

 tables, inducing disease in men. The learned professor is 

 inclined to "regard as one and the same deleterious principle 

 developed in an infuriated and over-driven ox, a passionate 

 woman, the cadaveric venom of the human subject, or that of 

 human beings or animals suffering many hours in labour, or 

 from parturient fever." We may presume that the juices of 

 an enraged philosopher would be quite as dangerous as those 

 of a passionate woman • and in all these cases there is a con- 

 nexion between a certain mental or nervous condition, and the 

 poisonous character which the solids or fluids assume. Mr. 

 Gamgee says that he has frequently spoken to butchers on the 

 subject, and received from them an account of how they have 

 suffered from cuts received in dressing over-driven animals. 

 In man, he tell us, the meat of such creatures produces vio- 

 lent dysentery, with febrile excitement. 



Where specific malignant disease exists in animals, the 



* Edinburgh Veterinary Review, ~SI;\y 186?. 



