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pecuniary advantages, and counting as nothing the sanitary wellbeing
of the public at large. He was stating a fact, when he said that
private slaughter-houses rendered it impossible to inspect animals,
and prevent the sale of diseased meat. He was sorry to have to
acknowledge the fact that even the government virtually sanctioned
the trade in diseased animals, which was attended with such bad
consequences. The private slaughter-houses offered facilities for
keeping up this trade of supplying meat which was often poisonous.
It was wrong to bring forward medical men to give evidence in
regard to diseased meat. There was but one safe rule, and that
was the one which had been given by the great law-giver, Moses,
namely, that such meat should not be eaten. If we had had a law to
suppress the trade in this kind of meat, we should probably have
meat tweuty-five or thirty per cent. cheaper than it is now. Any
rational method to put a stop to disease would, if successful, add largely
to the food of the country, but it was very difficult to impress this fact on
the public mind. The ignorance in the minds of those who were able to
introduce a better state of things was, he thought, disgraceful, and
it was intolerable that there should be no system of watchfulness, the
want of which condemned our people, in many instances, virtually to
starvation. Simple precautions, such as were mentioned in the paper,
would obviate these evils. He would develope, as much as possible,
the free-trade in meat, but stop that in disease, but its abolition
was impossible so long as the private slaughter-houses existed.
He had come to the conclusion, from what he had seen of the
use made of diseased meat in sausages, and by the third-rate butchers,
that it was with them impossible to have any system adequate to
protect the public.
Mr. Sneade Brown called attention to the evidence which had
been given in a former number of the "Transactions" of the Society,
in regard to Leith and other towns where private slaughter-houses
were not allowed, and in which it was shown that there had been an
advantage to everyone. In a Report of the Medical Officer of the
Privy Council in 1860, where the slaughter-houses had been examined,
in the course of an inquiry instituted for the purpose of
devising measures for the prevention of a disease which had appeared
on the continent, there were some terrible pictures of the condition
of slaughter-houses. All of them were found to have objectionable
features.
Dr. Alfred Carpenter said the question ought to be taken up
in reference to every large town in the kingdom. In the district
with which ho was connected new slaughter-houses had been
forbidden and public abattoirs erected. But he was sorry to say
they had not been much used, the butchers preferred to continue
using their private places; perhaps because they could slaughter
their diseased cattle without being observed. The adoption of the
public abattoirs would be an advantage for the poor. In the private
slaughter-houses even good meat became tainted by contact with the