Disease from Animals

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 21, 1878

Disease from Animals.

REFERENCE has been made to remarks by Dr. Hammond regarding the causes, effects, meliorations and remedies of the disease known as cerebral hyperæmia, or fullness of blood in the head. In a chapter devoted to a kindred subject he refers to certain maladies which have been produced by people eating flesh of animals which have been tortured previous to death. He makes especial reference to one family in particular, whose members had eaten largely of the flesh of a deer that had been caught in some trap and had suffered agony some hours before death ensued. Those of the family who had eaten lightly suffered lightly. The mother, who had eaten heartily, acquired an incurable disease. She suffered from it for several years, and then, after having tried several remedies in vain, died.

This doubtless is an extraordinary case, but there are enough analogous to them to show that certain cases of death may thus be accounted for. The cattle and sheep brought to this market are frequently transported under such conditions that disease is manufactured in them ere they arrive here. They are provided with cars which necessitate their being huddled together. Warmth and friction and irritation are bred, and long before the goal is reached the poor beast is in a terrible state of fatigue, unrest and turbulence. Once arrived at the market the idea is not to keep them on hand any longer than is absolutely necessary. We have little doubt that many diseases arise in this way.—Sel.