272 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
The ‘ Medical Times and Gazette / in directing attention 
to diseased cattle and unwholesome meat, states that— 
“All over the country cattle are flying from the effects of inclement 
weather and insufficient food, and whenever the carrion can be sold for 
human food tin* temptation is too great for the bucolic conscience to 
resist. The elaborate report of Dr. Headlam Greenhow throws doubt 
on the noxious quality of the flesh of animals dying of disease; but 
it is evident, from the testimony of skilled witnesses, that the diseases 
of which cattle are now dying produce not merely emaciation, but a 
positive sourness and unwholesome quality. Our informant, visiting 
a very clean slaughter-house, where there was abundance of good 
meat, noticed a peculiar dissecting-room smell, which proceeded 
from a tub filled with pork in a disgusting state, and partly black 
with ecchymosis. This was seized, and some healthy looking pork, 
macerated in the same tub of water, was seized likewise, because 
impregnated with the putrid water, although the butcher remon¬ 
strated loudly. In the same district some veal was seized which was 
but a day or two old, and some mutton from a sheep which had 
been crushed to death in a railway-van. The femur was smashed, and 
the meat black with extravasated blood. Some Welsh legs, dressed as 
lamb, with a little wool fastened round above the hoofs, were not seized, 
hut left, in order that the honest ingenuity of the butcher in manu¬ 
facturing ‘lamb’ might meet with its reward from a discerning public. 
The practical questions that arise are these : first, the necessity of 
stricter supervision at railway termini and steam-packet wharves ; next, 
a more full and efficient superintendence of the great central markets, 
and a frequent visitation of local slaugter-houses and low butchers' 
shops by parochial sanitary inspectors; and, lastly, something like 
reasonable security that condemned meat shall be so destroyed as not to 
enter in any way into the composition of human food. At present, it 
is next to certain that some which is boiled down is made to contribute 
a grease which is used in the manufacture of butter; a little of it, too, 
is added to chicory in roasting, in order to give this counterfeit a richness 
and tone, both to touch and taste and to contribute that oily sensation 
which coffee yields and chicory does not.” 
With this extract we must close our present remarks on 
this important question. 
VIVISECTIONS. 
From time to time we have reported the praiseivorthy 
efforts of the “ Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
An imals/’ to remove the blot of vivisection from the pages 
of medical science. As was to be expected, the French sys¬ 
tem of teaching its Veterinary students found numerous 
advocates, both in this country and on the Continent, who 
zealously defended the proceeding on the ground of its 
