p. 103 | Good Health by John Harvey Kellogg

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 27, 1879

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 5, No. 13.

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Good Health.

By John Harvey Kellogg

Pork;

OR THE DANGERS OF PORK EATING EXPOSED.

(Continued.)

THE TERRIBLE TRICHINÆ.

3. Now, my friends, assist your eye-sight by a good microscope, and you will be convinced that you have only just caught a glimpse of the enormous filthiness, the inherent badness, and intrinsic ugliness of this loathsome animal. Take a thin slice of the lean flesh, place it upon the stage of your microscope, adjust the eye-piece, and look. If you are fortunate, you will find displayed before your eyes hundreds of voracious little animals, each coiled up in its little cell waiting for an opportunity to escape from its prison walls and begin its destined work of devastation. A gentleman of eminence in Louisville has made very extensive researches upon the subject, and asserts that in at least one hog out of every ten these creatures may be found.

A few weeks ago we obtained a small portion of the flesh of an individual that had died with trichinæ. Upon subjecting it to a careful microscopical examination with a good instrument, we discovered multitudes of the worms. The animal is seen inclosed in a little cyst, or sac, which is dissolved by the gastric juice when taken into the stomach of any animal. The parasite being then set at liberty, immediately penetrates the thin, muscular walls of the stomach, and gradually works its way throughout the whole muscular system, not sparing even the heart. It possesses the power of propagating its species with wonderful rapidity; and a person once infected is almost certain to die a lingering death of excruciating agony.

Being curious to know, approximately, how numerous were the worms in the specimens we were examining, we prepared a small portion about the size of a kernel of wheat in a suitable manner. By careful count, we found upwards of 500: and in a large portion of the specimen they lay so thickly together that it was impossible to isolate them. None but solitary individuals were counted; and hence it is fairly presumed that the specimen really contained double the number actually counted. A little computation will show that the flesh of the individual furnishing the specimen must have contained from 250,000 to 500,000 trichinæ in every cubic inch of muscle.

In Helstadt, Prussia, one hundred and three persons were poisoned, and twenty of them died within a month.

During past seasons this disease has been especially prevalent in this country. Scores of authentic cases of recent occurrence might be cited.

The report has been current in the newspapers that several thousand hogs died of the disease in one locality in Illinois, known as the Kaskaskia Bottom, during the fall and winter a few years since.

It is doubtless not known how many deaths are really due to this cause; for many persons die of strange, unknown diseases, which baffle the doctors' skill both as to diagnosis and cure. Trichinosis also very much resembles other diseases in some of its stages, and may be attributed to other than its true cause. It is thought by some medical men of considerable eminence that hundreds of people die of the disease without its true nature being suspected.

PORK UNCLEAN.

Have we not seen that a hog is nothing better than an animated mass of physical defilement? Few that have seen the animal will dispute that his filthiness is a most patent fact. How wise and sanitary, then, was the command of God to the ancient Jews, "It is unclean unto you. Ye shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their dead carcass."

Although it may not be said that this law still exists, and is binding upon all mankind as a moral obligation, it is quite plain that the physical basis upon which the law is founded is as good to-day as at any previous period. Could it be proved that the hog had kept pace with advancing civilization, and had improved his habits, we might possibly find more tolerance for him; but he is evidently just as unclean as ever, and just as unfit for food.

Adam Clarke, when once requested to give thanks at a repast of which pork constituted a conspicuous part, used the following words: "Lord, bless this bread, these vegetables, and this fruit; and if thou canst bless under the gospel what thou didst curse under the law, bless this swine's flesh."

The Mohammedans, as well as the Jews, abstain entirely from the use of pork. Such is also the case with some other tribes of Asia and Africa.

EVIL EFFECTS OF PORK-EATING.

At the head of the list we place scrofula. How almost universally it abounds! How few are untainted by this ugly disease! The chronic sore eyes, glandular enlargements, obstinate ulcers, disfigured countenances, unsightly eruptions, including a long list of skin diseases, all proclaim the defilement of the blood with this vile humor. So, too, do the vast army of dwarfed, strumous, precocious children tell the same story. Erysipelas, too, a dreadful scourge, owes more to pork than any other cause. That terrible disease, leprosy, so common in Eastern countries, and now beginning to show itself upon our own shores, is largely attributable to pork-eating.

"Biliousness," a name which covers every bad condition for which no other appropriate name can be found, is notoriously the result of pork-eating. This is the main reason why so many people complain of "biliousness" in the spring, after gorging themselves with fat pork all winter. The liver is overworked in attempting to remove from the system such a mass of impurity as is received in the eating of pork. It consequently becomes clogged, congested, torpid. Then follow all the ills consequent upon the irritation of biliary matters in the blood. The skin becomes tawny—jaundiced. The kidneys are overworked. Perhaps a fever results. A partial clearing out then occurs, which enables the individual to pass along for a time, until some epidemic or contagious disease claims him as a lawful victim, which is almost certain to be.

Consumption is another disease which is not easily separable from pork-eating. In fact, scrofula is its great predisposing cause. The narrow chests, projecting shoulders, thin features and lank limbs of so many young boys and girls are evidence of a consumptive tendency, of which a scrofulous diathesis is the predisposing cause.

Dyspepsia, that malady of many forms, is a frequent result from the use of pork. Especially when fat, and salted or smoked, pork is one of the most indigestible of foods, requiring between five and six hours for its digestion, when decent food will digest in half that time. This is the reason for the notion that salt pork is an excellent thing to "stick by the rib."

Tape-worm, we have already mentioned as the result of eating measly pork. It is a very difficult disease to cure, and often baffles the best medical skill for many years. Few ever detect the cysts unless their attention has been directed to the matter.

Trichinæ produces in man an uncurable disease. No remedy can stay the ravages of the parasite. All pork-eaters are in constant danger, for the worm is too small to be seen without the aid of the microscope. However this disease is not nearly so formidable as the others named; for it is not so common, neither does it entail any weight of suffering upon posterity as does scrofula.