LONDON SAUSAGES. 213 
horseflesh, the meat of a defunct poodle, or the mortal re- 
mains of a cat that has departed her ninth life, as 
“ Too good 
For human nature’s daily food.” 
It is their custom, as reported by one of themselves, to con- 
vert into sausages meat entirely unfit for human consump- 
tion ; whether rendered putrid by keeping, or unwholesome 
by the diseased condition of the animal which supplied it. 
Our information concerning the poisonous influence of 
diseased or tainted meat has hitherto been principally derived 
from continental sources. This is not due to any super- 
eminent honesty on the part of our British dealers, but to 
the absence of any effectual system of Medical Police in this 
country, until the appointment last year of the Medical 
Officers of Health. One of these gentlemen — Dr. Aldis, of 
St. George’s, Hanover Square, district — recently applied to 
the magistrate for an order to burn or bury a quantity of 
offensive and putrid meat (amounting to a hundredweight 
and a half) lying on the premises of a sausage-maker in 
Grosvenor Row, Pimlico, which was being converted into 
sausages. Dr. Aldis and one of his inspectors described the 
filthy state of the meat. The defendant then observed, 
“ It would be quite useless for him to think of carrying on 
business if proceedings like the present were to be taken 
against him, for there was not a sausage-maker’s in London 
but where the same description of meat w r as used.” As 
regards this man personally, we may remark that it is pos- 
sible society w r ould recover the shock, even if he were to shut 
up shop. 
Now, the experiments of Gaspard and Magendie have 
proved that putrid animal matter introduced into the system 
of healthy animals induced a disease closely resembling the 
typhoid fever of man ; and Dr. Christison records a case 
wTere the lives of a w r hole family v T ere jeopardized, and one 
of its members died, from partaking of broth made from 
meat like that above described. Amongst our London poor, 
who consume the abominable garbage of which, according to 
the above statement, cheap sausages are composed, it is not 
unusual to meet with cases of fever, the cause of which is 
involved in mystery; and it is impossible to believe that 
putrid meat, however spiced, may be eaten with impunity, 
especially by a half-starved human being, living in a vitiated 
atmosphere, and often with a gin-sodden constitution. 
More than this, there occasionally occur, amongst our 
poor, cases of disease of a most anomalous kind, and pre- 
xxx. 29 
