392 
DISEASED MEAT. 
rapidly had the disease progressed in some of them, that 
death supervened on their being subjected to a little extra 
fatigue. These animals died from causes on which no 
rational difference of opinion can exist, but in the teeming 
brain of the contagious alarmist, might it not be cited as an 
example, to show how a flock of sheep will suffer from an 
infected district, and how they ought all to have been de¬ 
stroyed, to prevent the spread of the disease by contaminating 
the trucks ? The same butcher showed me in his shop the 
carcasses of four oxen slaughtered that morning out of eight 
he lately purchased, and for which he paid ^172 sterling. 
I never saw richer or healthier beef in any market: the flesh 
being of a bright-carmine colour, and intermixed with layers 
and deposit throughout of white fat, juicy and plump. 
He then ordered his foreman to bring the livers taken 
from two of these animals, the other two having been 
removed, for my inspection. He put it to me to say whether 
I had ever seen better meat or in higher condition than he 
showed me, or could believe it to be the flesh of oxen 
slaughtered with such enlarged and diseased livers ? I con¬ 
fessed my surprise. I carefully examined the livers. They 
were abnormally enlarged, with the exception of a small 
portion of one of the lobes; the substance of the whole 
viscus was disorganized. A great portion was in a semi- 
cartilaginous state, and the edge of the knife used in cutting 
into it excited the sensation as if grating on sand-paper. 
There were numerous abscesses filled with matter, some very 
large, having indurated sacs. Before long the animals must 
have certainly succumbed under the disease, but the fact is 
not less instructive, how long the healthiness of the flesh is 
preserved in such an extensive state of morbid action in the 
liver. The public has been widely and fearfully alarmed at 
the reports of human life and health suffering from the con¬ 
sumption of the flesh of diseased animals. The instances I 
have cited are calculated, in my opinion, to allay such injurious 
apprehensions, so far, at least, as the flesh of sheep and oxen 
is concerned, labouring under flukes in the liver, and those 
other fearful morbid ravages in that organ wdiich I have 
described. 
In a report lately published by the Swiss Veterinary Asso¬ 
ciation, an enlightened society, composed of the most eminent 
members of the medical and veterinary profession in that 
country, I find among the many very important questions 
submitted to their investigation and decision one, viz., 
whether the flesh of animals slaughtered with lung disease is 
injurious as an article of human food. After long and care- 
