Even when an animal is perfectly healthy, its tissues begin to decompose as soon as the animal is really dead—as soon as _rigor mortis_ has passed away. Even when meat is kept at a very low temperature, it has been found that it decomposes after the first twenty-four hours; so that the amount of decomposition present in all animals whose carcasses have been hanging up for hours, and even days, in a shop may easily be imagined! In the case of game, the carcasses are frequently green and blue with decomposition, and the chemicals injected into the animal in order to preserve it from such decomposition. For only in this manner can meats be preserved; and it has been proved time and time again that meats are treated and “doctored” with drugs and chemicals of all kinds in order to delay their decomposition. To think that we really eat such stuff, and give it to our children, and even _prescribe_ it for invalids, is too revolting for words! It passes all comprehension! Dr Kellogg, in his excellent little book on this subject, says, when speaking of the deadly effects of the poisons formed within the body: “Physiologists sometimes, for experimental purposes, separate from its bony attachments one of the muscles of a frog’s leg, and arrange it in such a manner, in connection with a battery and a suitable device, that by a repetition of electric shocks the muscle may be made to contract and lift a small weight. After being thus made to work for a longer or shorter period, the muscle becomes fatigued to such a degree that it no longer contracts in response to the electric stimulus. This is shown to be due to the accumulation of the waste matters, of which mention has been made. If at this point the muscle is washed with a weak saline solution, it at once recovers its ability to work. If now a _fresh_ muscle is thus prepared, and strong beef tea or solution of beef extract applied to it, the muscle at once becomes expanded or unable to contract, the same as if it had been working for a long time, but without having done any work whatever! The reason for this is that the beef tea or beef extract is simply a solution of the same poisons which are developed in the muscles by work, and to the paralysing effect of which its fatigue and inability to contract are due.... By injection of the fluid obtained by compressing a piece of beef steak or so-called beef juice into the veins of a rabbit, it has been proved to be highly deadly in character. The quantity of beef juice required to kill a rabbit of given weight is _less_ than the amount of urine required to produce the same effect.... The juice obtained from the flesh of a dog was twice as poisonous as that obtained from ox flesh; in other words, it required twice as much beef juice to kill an animal of given weight as the juice obtained from the flesh of a dog....”[23] [23] “Shall We Slay to Eat?” pp. 53-56. Upon this subject of beef tea, Dr Tibbles says: