8 THE MEAT FETISH.
and fowl, are continually wearing out and being replenished. The tissue and every part of it, is constantly wasting away, and this waste material, varying in its degrees of nastiness, is conveyed out of the body by divers channels of exit, where it is known as excrement, urine, perspiration, and the like. Take a given cubic inch of flesh. It is full of waste tissue and refuse matter ready for its journey outward or already embarked upon it. If the animal had lived another hour, we should have been able to recognise it as urine or sweat, but we do not recognise it, and we consume it! And this is the case with healthy, robust animals; but very few domestic animals are healthy and robust. The fright of the slaughter-house taints the blood of the healthy ones, but such healthy ones are rare. Tuberculosis rages in the most carefully guarded herds of cattle, and the recent Royal Commission in England has reported that the disease may be communicated to men by the meat. Anthrax, a sudden, mysterious disease which carries off a steer in a few hours, is very infectious to man, and how often may the animal have been slaughtered a few minutes before the attack! It is the interest of the breeder to hurry away his diseased stock to market as fast as possible, and no inspection can overtake his eagerness. Sheep are exceedingly unhealthy for the most part. I visited a flock in winter, and noticed that every individual was suffering most disgustingly from influenza of some kind. I questioned the shepherd, and he assured me that sheep were always that way in winter. Allowing for exaggeration, this is not cheering news for the amateur of mutton-chops. As for pork and ham, there is no such thing as a healthy pig. He suffers from every conceivable kind of disease, many of them human diseases, too; and our very word "scrofula" comes from the Latin scrofa, a sow. And yet we continue to eat them, tuberculosis, scrofula, and all, and fear for our lives if we have to go a day or two without!
We are much more careful of our own cleanliness
