supplying to the public, inasmuch as large quantities of meat are purchased at Newgate in the dead meat market, the carcases having been prepared in distant parts of the country. In many cases it is only the viscera, such as the lungs, as in the deaths from pleuro-pneumonia, that is to outward appearance diseased; this being removed, leaves the muscular fibre but little changed in appearance, but still unwholesome, and to a certain degree poisonous. It does not always happen however that town butchers are so blameless. Mr. Gamgee describes a process called “polishing carcases,” by which they ingeniously manage to make diseased, lean carcases look like good fat meat. This is managed by killing a good fat ox at the same time that a number of diseased and lean animals are being killed. When the lean kine have been skinned, their flesh is rubbed over from the fat of the healthy ox. In order to distribute this fat equally, hot cloths are used to distribute it over the carcase and give it an artificial gloss, and an appearance of being generally fat. The diseased organs of animals, however bad, are not wasted. They are either given to pigs, or taken direct to the sausage makers. Nothing seems too bad for the makers of these atrocious compounds. “I have seen,” says Mr. Gamgee, “carcases dressed, and portions of it prepared for sale as sausage-meat and otherwise, although thoracic disease had gone on to such an extent that gallons of fetid fluid were removed from the pleural sacs, and that large abscesses existed in the lungs.”
One of the most pestilential of the diseases that attack stock of all kinds is anthrax, a blood disease, which shows itself in boils, and carbuncles, and gangrenous complications. Even beasts dying of so loathsome a disease as this, find their way to the butchers’ shops. It has been proved that pigs partaking of this poisoned flesh have become infected with carbuncular irruptions, and there seems good reason to believe that the great prevalence of carbuncular irruptions in the human subject, noticed within these last twenty years, is due to the use of this class of diseased meat. Dr. Livingstone remarks “that whenever the natives of Africa eat the flesh of an animal that had died of pleuro-pneumonia, they always suffered from carbuncle.” One of the most common diseases prevalent among stock is the measles in pigs. The term is rather inappropriate, as the measle is nothing less than the larvæ of the tape-worm. The Irish say that “there is no pig without its measle.” So common is this affection among Irish pigs, that it has created a new profession among those who deal in these animals, called “measle triers.” Mr. Gamgee says, before the animals are paid for, they are examined by a measle trier, a man who proceeds to work with a short and stout stick, a penknife, and an assistant. The pig is caught by his hind legs, then by a fore one, and then turned up; the stick is forced into the mouth and turned down on the ground, with a knee placed upon it, inflicting pain and bruising sadly the pig’s upper jaw. The tongue is then drawn out and wiped, and measles looked for, or felt for, beneath or at the root of the tongue. When it can’t be found there and the seller denies the fact of measles being present, the measle trier has to cut into the tongue and draw out the larvæ.
It is not very satisfactory to hear that nearly all the measly pigs find their way to London, the Irish being too knowing to eat them. Mr. Gamgee tells us that there cannot be less than 50,000 measly pigs in Ireland, and that for every measly pig at least one person contracts tape-worm, hence the prevalence of that parasite in the human intestines. It has long been a puzzle how the larvæ of the tape-worm could enter the stomach of man alive, considering that the heat of cooking generally kills them, but it is pretty certain that they are not always killed in the curing and smoking of ham and bacon, and in this manner it is supposed to obtain access to the human intestines. Measles are never found in Wiltshire bacon, therefore we should advise all our readers who wish to avoid this unpleasant parasite, to confine themselves to the home-bred article. Another circumstance which tends to make pork at times unwholsome is the practice of feeding pigs with all kinds of offal. It is very common to give them the diseased viscera of all animals that have died, and in many cases their flesh is thereby rendered poisonous. Mr. Gamgee says that sows fed on horse flesh and other offal, always die shortly after they have farrowed, and that young pigs fed on flesh soon die. All carnivorous pigs may be known by their soft diffluent fat. Mr. Huxtable, the famous pig breeder, is accustomed to fatten his stock by giving them a slice of fat bacon every morning. We hope after the evidence given by Mr. Gamgee that he will no longer pursue this objectionable practice. There is a great temptation to feed pigs on offal, as they so speedily make flesh on this diet. For this reason many butchers breed pigs, and let them find their living in their slaughter houses. Beware, therefore, good reader, of butcher pork.
We are told that in the great establishments in France for the rearing of chickens and fowls, that they are fed upon horse flesh, which they eat voraciously. If carnivorous feeding makes our pigs’ flesh poisonous, it is very probable that a like system of feeding will make our delicate chicken meat a curse rather than a blessing to invalids. We may feel pretty sure that the horse flesh is not of the most healthy kind or of the freshest quality. This rank food is not given primarily with the idea of fattening the fowls, but for its known quality of stimulating them to lay eggs, a carnivorous feeding hen, it is asserted, never failing to give her egg a day the whole year round; a discovery this not very refreshing to the lovers of new-laid eggs, as so many of them now find their way here from France.
To revert again, however, to the causes at work affecting the healthy quality of our meat, we may refer to the very unnatural manner in which our live-stock is fattened. Some time before Christmas all animals intended to compete for the great Smithfield prizes at the Agricultural Show are dosed with oil-cake and other carbonaceous materials, at the same time that they are stall-fed and deprived of all exercise. The result, in the butcher’s eye, is “a perfect picture” of a beast,