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OF ALIMENT.

over-heated. Excessive heat causes a fever, exalts theanimal salts, and mixes the blood so intimately with theflesh, that it cannot be separated. For this reason,butchers should be severely punished who over-drivetheir cattle. No person would choose to eat the fleshof an animal which had died in a high fever; yet thatis the case with all over-drove cattle; and the fever isoften raised even to the degree of madness.

But this is not the only way by which butchers ren-der meat unwholesome. The abominable custom offilling the cellular membrane of animals with air, in orderto make them appear fat, is every day practised. Thisnot only spoils the meat, and renders it unfit for keep-ing, but is such a dirty trick, that the very idea of it issufficient to disgust a person of any delicacy at everything which comes from the shambles. Who can hearthe thought of eating meat which has been blown upwith air from the lungs of a dirty fellow, perhaps la-bouring under the very worst of diseases?

Butchers have likewise a method of filling the cellu-lar membranes of animals with blood. This makes themeat seem fatter, and likewise weigh more, but is not-withstanding a very penicious custom, as it both ren-ders the meat unwholesome and unfit for keeping. Iseldom see a piece of meat from the shambles, wherethe blood is not diffused through the cellular texture.I shall not say that this is always the effect of design;but I am certain it is not the case with animals that arekilled for domestic use, and properly blooded. Vealseems to be most frequently spoilt in this way. Per-haps that may in some measure be owing to the practiceof carrying calves from a great distance to market, bywhich means their tender flesh is bruised, and many oftheir vessels burst.

No people in the world eat such quantities of saltmeat as the English, which is one reason why they areso generally tainted with the scurvy, and its numeroustrain of consequences, indigestion, low spirits, hypochon-driacism, &c. Animal food was surely designed forman, and, with a proper mixture of vegetables, it will be

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