INCREASE OF DISEASE AMONG ANIMALS.
By C. M. S.
The following extract from an article under the above title, in Good Health, is a confirmation of the statement frequently made in the SIGNS OF THE TIMES that disease is continually increasing in both the human family and the brute creation. It has its lesson both as a warning to those who are making the flesh of animals a part of their diet, and as another evidence that the old world is waning rapidly and that the close of its history is near at hand. “That disease is rapidly increasing among animals is a clearly recognized fact. It is only comparatively recently that hog cholera, swine plague, and other epidemic diseases have come to be recognized as of sufficient importance to require governmental attention and the co-operation of different communities in stamping out these maladies. The rapid spread of tuberculosis among cattle is also a recently recognized fact. Within late years it is not uncommon to hear of the destruction of entire herds of extremely valuable cattle by this disease. The occurrence of hog cholera has come to be so common, and the extended epidemics so frequent, that it has been sought to combat the disease by vaccination, just the same as smallpox in human beings is combated.” “Numerous other diseases from which animals suffer have been likewise increasing. This is the natural result of the association of animals with man, and the herding together of enormous numbers of animals under unnatural conditions. In numerous instances human beings and the lower animals co-operate in the development of parasites, as in the case of the trichina and the tapeworm. Animals which become infected by the eggs from the tape-worm are in turn consumed by human beings, and so the parasite is passed around. One single measly ox or pig may be the means of lodging tapeworms in the alimentary canal of many scores of human beings. The frequency of disease in lower animals at the present time is such that it is no exaggeration to say that no person can safely make use of flesh as an article of food without first requiring a careful medical examination of the animal, while it is still alive, and a careful expert examination, including microscopical investigation of the flesh, after the death of the animal. The flesh must then be eaten at once, before decomposition has begun, in order that it may be free from ptomains.” “Few will care to go to the pains, trouble, and expense thus to insure themselves against the danger of contracting disease thru the eating of the flesh of diseased animals. Evidently the proper remedy is to discard the use of flesh food altogether, and instead to use the pure, heaven-given food upon which man and animals together were by nature intended to subsist.” “The notion that thoro cooking is a complete protection against injury thru the use of the flesh of diseased animals, tho widely prevalent, is wholly erroneous, and has doubtless often led to grave injury and great suffering, if not fatal sickness. Cooking will destroy both animal and vegetable parasites which are dangerous to human life; but the most thoro cooking will not destroy bacterial poisons. Cooking destroys the germs, but not the poisons which the germs have previously produced, and which are stored in the tissues. Having a fixed chemical composition, the same as common salt or sugar, they do not undergo any chemical change in the ordinary process of cooking. The only way to avoid the dangers from the use of flesh food is to avoid flesh food.”—J. H. Kellogg, M. D. Thus has been perfected, the endless chain of disease transmission, which, in addition to the immediate destruction which it causes, is rapidly bringing the race into a condition where it will be ripe for the harvest of death. In proportion as disease increases, the human system loses its power to resist it, and thus the rate of the increase is augmented.