360 WEST OF SCOTLAND VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
putation on any of the gentlemen at present holding office as 
inspectors of markets or slaughter-houses; but I may at 
least indicate one way by which they might be satisfactorily 
accomplished, although, in my opinion, the present market 
and slaughter-house regulations, if carried out, are sufficiently 
stringent for all practical purposes. Let professionally 
educated men be appointed as inspectors of these places— 
men qualified by their veterinary and scientific knowledge 
and experience to give an authoritative opinion as to what 
animals are or are not suitable for human food—men of 
known abilities and unimpeached integrity, who would per¬ 
form their duties without fear or favour. Let the light of 
science be brought to our aid, and the public would then 
have a guarantee that they would be effectually protected 
against any deleterious animal food emanating from the public 
shambles. 
To anatomise the subject of diseased animal food thoroughly, 
the scalpel must be used with a firm and unflinching hand, 
and this pestilential sore in our social economy laid open, 
and, when discovered, the application of the remedy must be 
short, sharp, and decisive. 
Perhaps, after all, however, it may be a wind-ball which the 
probe of investigation may cause to collapse, or it may be 
found to arise from the morbid action of the spleen in those 
whose cacoethes scribendi has raised the whirlwind of nau¬ 
seating alarm now agitating the public mind; or, on the 
other hand, it may be of the very utmost importance that 
certain gentlemen have lifted their pen to disclose a practice 
the prevention of which would be a lasting security to the 
community against unwholesome meat ever appearing on 
their tables. 
Indirectly, the integrity of this association is assailed; and 
were this question to remain without being thoroughly dis¬ 
cussed, it might lay us open to a charge of complicity in the 
nefarious traffic, by our neglecting to institute those inquiries 
which the extensive professional practice of its members 
enable them so easily and so accurately to answer. The 
reputation of stock-holders and dealers, cow-feeders and 
dairymen, agents and butchers, is intimately concerned in 
the settlement of this question. The public anxiety demands 
either a refutation of the published statements, or that they 
be established as facts, and producer and customer are equally 
interested in having a careful, free, and candid discussion to 
ventilate the w r hole matter. 
Gentlemen, in considering this subject I have every con- 
