CONSUMPTION IN DAIRY COWS.
By E. H. Curtiss
"THEY Had Consumption. Startling Results of Examination of Dairy Cows in Chicago." Thus reads the headlines of an article in the Topeka Capital of May 30. Then is given the account of the killing of twenty-five cows at the Chicago stockyard, every one of which had tuberculosis. The article states that "while there was no outward sign of the disease, yet every cow was in an advanced stage of consumption. From the lungs of one subject a pint of germs was taken." To-day I clipped an article from the same paper, dated June 6, in which Governor Tanner, of Illinois, says: "My observations lead me to believe that it is unsafe to drink milk which is not known to be non-tubercular. The cattle which I have seen slaughtered and dissected to-day, saturated with tuberculosis, ten days ago were furnishing milk to my family." Again he says, "I am convinced that tuberculosis has made a more general invasion of livestock than is generally believed." Disease in cattle is so wide-spread, as is shown by these statements and also others which might be given, that it is getting to be absolutely unsafe to use flesh as an article of food at all. If men would compare these statements with the words of the Lord on the question of diseased animals I am sure that few would want it on their tables as an article of diet. The Lord, when speaking through the prophet Hosea, said: "Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel; for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away. . . . My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:1-6. We see how perfectly the Lord has described the times in which we live. The earth is filled with violence; there is swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing. Every paper is full of the record of these crimes. He says that in such a time as this the people would languish, with the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air and the fish also would be taken away. To "languish" is to be sick and diseased. See Ps. 41:1-3. The Lord has thus told us plainly that the animals would be diseased in such a generation as this present one is, and if you and I persist in the use of the flesh of diseased animals, do you not see that we are eating disease and are rejecting the counsel of God against ourselves? "My people," says the Lord, "are destroyed for lack of knowledge." We may have the knowledge of these things, for it is published everywhere. After the flood God gave man permission to eat the flesh of animals, but the result was the shortening of life. If mankind were not so blind and stiffnecked they would have seen long ago that God spoke the truth. Will we not learn to eat that which God gave to man in the beginning; that which God pronounced "very good"?