266 
APPEARANCES  OF  GOOD  AND  BAD  MEAT. 
eased  meat  is  soft  and  wet, — in  fact,  it  is  often  so  wet  that  serum 
runs  from  it,  and  then  it  is  technically  called  wet.  Good  meat 
has  but  little  odor,  and  this  is  not  disagreeable ;  whereas  diseased 
meat  smells  faint  and  cadaverous,  and  it  often  has  the  odor  of 
medicine.  This  is  best  observed  by  cutting  it  and  smelling  the 
knife,  or  by  pouring  a  little  warm  water  upon  it.  Good  meat  will 
bear  cooking  without  shrinking,  and  without  losing  very  much  in 
weight ;  but  bad  meat  shrivels  up,  and  it  often  boils  to  pieces. 
All  these  effects  are  due  to  the  presence  of  a  large  proportion  of 
serum  in  the  meat,  and  to  the  relatively  large  amount  of  inter- 
cellular or  gelatinous  tissue ;  for  the  fat  and  true  muscular  sub- 
stance are  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  deficient.  If,  therefore,  100 
grains  of  the  lean  or  muscular  part  of  good  meat  are  cut  up  and 
dried  at  a  temperature  of  boiling  salt  and  water  (224°  Fahren- 
heit), they  lose  only  from  69  to  74  grains  of  their  weight ;  but 
if  diseased  meat  is  thus  treated,  it  loses  from  75  to  80  per  cent, 
of  its  weight.  I  find  that  the  average  loss  of  weight  with  sound 
and  good  beef  is  72*3  per  cent.,  and  of  mutton  71*5  per  cent., 
whereas  the  average  loss  of  diseased  beef  is  76*1  per  cent.,  and 
of  diseased  mutton  78-2  per  cent.  Even  if  it  be  dried  at  a 
higher  temperature,  as  at  266°  Fahrenheit,  when  all  the  mois- 
ture is  expelled,  and  when  good  meat  loses  from  74  to  80  per 
cent  of  its  weight,  the  proportion  of  loss  in  bad  meat  is  equally 
as  great.  Other  characters,  of  a  more  refined  nature,  will  also 
serve  to  distinguish  good  from  bad  meat.  The  juice  or  serosity 
of  sound  flesh  is  slightly  acid,  and  it  contains  an  excess  of  potash 
salts,  chiefly  the  phosphate ;  whereas  diseased  meat,  from  being 
infiltrated  with  the  serum  of  blood,  is  often  alkaline,  and  the  salts 
of  soda,  especially  chloride  and  phosphate,  abound  in  it.  Lastly, 
when  good  meat  is  examined  under  the  microscope,  the  fibre  is 
clean  and  well-defined,  and  free  from  infusorial  creatures ;  but 
that  of  diseased  meat  is  sodden,  as  if  it  had  been  soaked  in  water, 
and  the  transverse  markings  are  indistinct  and  far  apart ;  besides 
which,  there  are  often  minute  organisms  like  infusorial  bodies. 
These  are  very  perceptible  in  the  flesh  of  animals  affected  with 
the  cattle  plague,  and  Dr.  Beal  has  described  them  as  entozoa- 
like  objects.  They  differ  altogether  from  the  parasites  which 
constitute  the  trichina  disease,  and  the  measles  of  pork.  How 
