The Mosaic law, in forbidding the use of blood as food, gives as the reason that the blood is the life. It follows, therefore, if the animal be unhealthy its blood may be regarded as unhealthy. But as the blood may be diseased without external or even internal evidence such as is open to common observation, the total prohibition of it obviates the risk that might otherwise be incurred. Modern science has discovered in the circulation of diseased animals microscopic organisms of different forms, each characteristic of some particular disease. They are parasitic in their nature, growing and multiplying in the living being, though they are capable of preserving their vitality outside the body. Some, like the bacillus, which is supposed to cause tuberculosis, may even be dried without losing their vital properties, and on entering the system be able to produce the disease proper to them. Others will develop in dead organic substances, but increase more abundantly in living structures. They are very plentiful in the atmosphere of certain localities, and settling on exposed wounded surfaces, or finding their way into the lungs and effecting a lodgment in the blood and tissues, they generate, each after its kind, specific infective diseases. When the blood becomes impregnated by any special organism, a drop may suffice to propagate the disease by inoculation in another animal. The mode of entrance of these morbid germs may be by inhalation, by inoculation, and by the ingestion of poisonous particles with the food. Any person living in unhygienic circumstances, and whose system is from any cause in a condition suited for the reception of these organisms, cannot safely eat meat which may contain them in the blood. In the splenic fever of cattle, for instance, which is communicable to man, these germs are exceedingly numerous, and the same may be said of the other specific febrile diseases. Eventually there is a deposit of morbid material in the tissues, where the process of development goes on till a great change in the once healthy structures is effected. With the light derived from recent investigation we are able to understand the wisdom and foresight of the Mosaic injunction as well as appreciate its supreme importance. The Jew, like the Christian, is exposed to the inroads of disease when he breathes an infected atmosphere and eats tainted food, provided he is susceptible at the time to the morbific influence, but he is protected by a dietary rule at the point where the Christian is in danger. The Jew who conforms to the law of Moses in this particular must have a better chance of escaping the ravages of epidemics than those who are not bound by these restrictions. This hygienic maxim goes far to explain the comparative freedom of the Jewish race from the large class of blood diseases.