SCROFULOUS MUTTON

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 27, 1876

SCROFULOUS MUTTON.

A few months since, we procured a sheep from a flock which was being fattened for the market. Upon making a careful dissection of the animal, we found its body teeming with scrofulous and tuberculous deposits. The mesenteric glands were all enlarged, presenting to the eye great nodules of scrofulous matter. Throughout the whole contents of the abdomen, the marks of disease were evident.

Suppose this animal had fallen into the hands of the butchers, as it would have done had we not procured it, who can tell the amount of disease which might have been communicated to the unsuspecting consumers of this diseased meat? It is well known that sheep die of themselves in a few years, being short-lived. They are especially liable to consumption. They do not usually die of acute disease, and must of course be more or less diseased for several years before they die. The owner of sheep usually exercises especial care to sell them for mutton before they are entirely disabled by disease, so that the butcher gets the start of nature a little in terminating the lives of the brutes, and human beings get the diseased carcasses as food.—Sel.