THE HOG : HYGIENIC INTERDICTS. 
233 
feeder for all tlie expenses that the breeding of the beast has cost. 
Then let every one rejoice and take his part in the ciiiing ; for 
there will be enough for all, the succession is rich. See tliose 
garlands of sausages, that never end, like the yellow boys of the 
dead miser, that ask to take the air. 
The analogy of the miser and the hog is a popular tradition, but 
it is very curious that the legislators of the Jews and the Arabs, 
the nations reputed most avaricious, should have been those first to 
proclaim the lilthiness of the hog. 
The Jewish and Arabian nations are peculiarly subject to the 
leprosy, as is proved by the important place that the history of 
this malady holds in their chronicles. 
The hog is the animal most subject to cutaneous diseases. The 
leprosy of the hog is called ladrerie, French synonyme of avarice. 
The spoiled meat of the hog may occasion very grave accidents. 
Even in Paris families are frequently poisoned by eating sausage-meat 
of a bad quality. M. Gisqiiet relates, in his Memoirs, that the first 
razzee ma.de by his agents among the pork dealers of the capital, 
produced a seizure of twenty thousand pounds of putrefied meat. 
They were honible hams, sausages and Italian cheese. The mat- 
ters seized were transported to Montfaucon and precipitated into 
the impure lakes of this modern Cocytus. During the night 
the wdiole cargo was fished up and restored to consumption. 
To oppose efficient obstacles to this retail of poisons, the Prefect 
ordered that in future the meats seized should be hashed up and 
intimately mixed with the filth at the bottom of the ponds of 
Montfaucon. 
Now the dangerous qualities of the hog’s flesh were no secret to 
the Arab legislators, who were all something of physicians. 
Hence the interdictions of their codes. The Jew and Arab 
were particulaily subject to skin diseases, either from their habitu- 
ally dirty habits, or on account of the scarcity of waters in their dry 
country. Moses and Mahommet would more rigorously than all 
others set their seal to the prohibition. 
Some too learned liistorians however, have asssigned to this reli- 
gious prohibition a more curious origin. They have attributed the 
i'epugnance of the Eastern nations for pork to three principal causes : 
