Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 39.

Health and Temperance.

Pork as Food.

THE following, from the National Live-Stock Journal, contains some wholesome truths which may open the eyes of some. The points which that Journal presents show that objections to eating pork and lard rest upon a basis of sound science and common sense, rather than upon “prejudice.” The Scripture makes no mistake when it pronounces the swine unclean and not fit to be eaten.

“The prejudice against the flesh of swine as human food is as old as history. If it has any foundation in nature, besides the filthy manner in which the hog is generally kept, it is because the hog is more subject to disease, or at least to a certain class of diseases, than other domestic animals. Its omnivorous appetite makes it liable to certain diseases from which the exclusively vegetable-eating animals are comparatively, if not entirely, exempt.

“The two evils most complained of are tape-worm and trichina—both parasitic. Both of these are developed in the animal tissues, and it is very doubtful if they ever afflict animals that do not eat animal food, or in some way get animal products into their stomachs and intestinal canals.

“The tape-worm, when encysted in the tissues of the hog, has the name of measles—though wholly unlike measles in the human species. The pork containing these encysted worms is known as ‘measly pork.’ When taken into the human stomach, they are liable to develop there in the form of the loathsome creature known as tape-worm. This is not necessarily fatal, but very annoying. In modern times, it is successfully removed by the skillful physician without pain or injury to the patient.

“Trichina is a parasite much more to be dreaded even than the tape-worm. It is liable to infect the human system in such numbers as not only to be very painful, but fatal; and we believe there is no known remedy. It is encysted in the flesh of the animal, in a dormant state, like the tape-worm. When the trichina enters the human stomach, it attaches itself to the mucous membrane and there awakens to all the activity of breeding thousands, if not millions, of its kind. These young trichina at once start out to find a place in which to encyst themselves for a dormant rest and await a resurrection by having the flesh in which they are imbedded eaten by some animal, brute or human, when they will repeat the role of their progenitors.

“It is when passing from the stomach and intestines to the muscles that the trichina give such pain, and frequently cause death. Pushing their way through the tissues, they cause great irritation and inflammation, resulting in death when the effects become unendurable. While in this active state of migration, seeking a home, they are as liable to be found in one class of tissues as in another. Hence, lard that has not been exposed to a heat of at least 212 degrees, Fahrenheit, is just as likely to contain them, if the animal was killed when the trichina were in a state of activity, as in any other part or product of the hog.”