Vegetarian cookery

ject, read to tho House an extract from Professor Gamgee. He says, “ In Loudon, I have seen butchers in private slaughterhouses dress extremely diseased carcasses, and ‘ polish ’ the meat. This filthy practice consists in killing a good fat ox at the same time that a number of lean and diseased animals are being killed. Boiling water is at hand, and when the lean animals have been skinned, their flesh is rubbed over with fat from the healthy ox, and hot cloths are used to keep the fat warm and to distribute it over the carcass, that it may acquire an artificial gloss, and an appearance of not being totally deprived of fat. In Edinburgh, I have seen sickly lambs without a particle of fat upon them, dressed up with the fat of healthy sheep much in the same way. From the private slaughter-houses in London I have known even the diseased organs themselves sent to the sausage maker. In company with another member of my pro fession, I have seen a carcass dressed, and portions of it prepared for sale as sausage-meat, and otherwise, although thoracic disease had gone to such an extent that gallons of fetid fluid were removed from the pleural sacs^ and that large abscesses existed in the lungs. ” (Hear, hear. ) In Edinburgh there were between 100 and 200 diseased cattle sold weekly in the meat market ; and as to Dublin, he would read an extract from the Times, dated December 17, 1862:— “The Royal Dublin Society met on Saturday evening to hear a lecture from Professor Gamgee, on disease and mortality among cattle. When he had concluded, kir. Ganlky, salesmaster, made an extraordinary statement. He said that, unless some means were devised to give the farmer some compensation for diseased cattle, it was impossible to prevent him from selling them, or the butcher from killing and selling them. Unless some society were formed to have diseased meat paid for, it would be killed and eaten. There was no use in mincing the matter ; every one of the salesmen sold diseased cattle. * The farmer could not otherwise pay his rent. The disease is so prevalent that he could not live were he to submit his cattle to destruction.” Did the sale of this diseased meat lead to disease in the human frame ? Of course, disease existed in very different proportions. To many, in most cases, it probably did no positive harm. The heat and process of cooking purified, and what Mr. Simon called “the strong disinfectant chemistry of digestion” deprived it of much of its danger. Still, the positive existence of disease communicated by diseased meat was very strong. He would read one or two extracts bearing on this point : — “ Professor Maclagan, of the University of Edinburgh, stated at a public meeting held in Edinburgh on the 29th of January, 1862, that in his practice, both as a physician and toxicologist, he had met with instances in which several persons had been attacked simultaneously with irritant symptoms after having in common partaken of meat which, on being examined, was found to contain no poison, nor to be in that state of putrescence which, as is well known, occasionally confers upon animal matters actively poisonous properties.” Dr. Alfred S. Taylor, E.R.S., in a lettor of the 12th of January, 1863, said, “As a general principle, I think diseased meat noxious and unfit for human food.” He moreover adds,