The American Reformed Cattle Doctor: Containing the necessary information for preserving the health and curing the diseases of oxen, cows, sheep, and swine, with a great variety of original recipes, and valuable information in reference to farm and dairy managementDadd, George H.
Science
The American Reformed Cattle Doctor: Containing the necessary information for preserving the health and curing the diseases of oxen, cows, sheep, and swine, with a great variety of original recipes, and valuable information in reference to farm and dairy management
Dadd, George H.
Veterinary medicine
Experience teaches us that in poultry the maximum of fat is obtained by
preventing them from taking exercise, and by a medium temperature. These
animals, in such circumstances, may be compared to a plant possessing in
the highest degree the power of converting all food into parts of its
own structure. The excess of the constituents of blood forms flesh and
other organized tissues, while that of starch, sugar, &c., is converted
into fat. When animals are fed on food destitute of nitrogen, only
certain parts of their structure increase in size. Thus, in a goose
fattened in the manner alluded to, the liver becomes three or four times
larger than in the same animal when well fed, with free motion; while we
cannot say that the organized structure of the liver is thereby
increased. The liver of a goose fed in the ordinary way is firm and
elastic; that of the imprisoned animal is soft and spongy. The
difference consists in a greater or less expansion of its cells, which
are filled with fat. Hence, when fat accumulates and free motion is
prevented, the animal is in a diseased state. Now, many tons of pork are
eaten in this diseased state, and it communicates disease to the human
family: they blame the pork, when, in fact, the pork raisers are often
more to blame. The reader is probably aware that some properties of food
pass into the living organism being assimilated by the digestive organs,
and produce an abnormal state. For example, the faculty of New York
have, time and again, testified to the destructive tendency of milk
drawn from cows fed in cities, without due exercise and ordinary care in
their management, giving it as their opinion that most of the diseases
of children are brought about by its use. If proof were necessary to
establish our position, we could cite it in abundance. A single case,
which happened in our own family, will suffice. A liver, taken from an
apparently healthy sow, (yet abounding in fat, and weighing about two
hundred pounds,) was prepared in the usual manner for dinner. We
observed, however, previous to its being cooked, that it was unusually
large; yet there was no appearance of disease about it; it was quite
firm. Each one partook of it freely. Towards night, and before partaking
of any other kind of food, we were all seized with violent pains in the
head, sickness at the stomach, and delirium: this continued for several
hours, when a diarrhoea set in, through which process the offending
matter was liberated, and each one rapidly recovered; pretty well
convinced, however, that we had had a narrow escape, and that the liver
was the sole cause of our misfortune.
Hence the proper management of swine becomes a subject of great
importance; for, if more attention were paid to it, there would be less
disease in the human family. When we charge these animals with being
"unclean creatures of gross habits," let us consider whether we have
not, in some measure, contributed to make them what they are.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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