A large proportion of the animals conducted to the shambles is in a diseased condition. Professor Gamgee estimates it at no less than one-fifth. Dr. Letheby, food analyst to the Corporation of London, condemns weekly about 2,000 pounds weight of flesh; but as his jurisdiction is limited to the "City," which contains a population of only about 114,000, the 2,000 pounds of diseased meat are probably only about 1-30th of the quantity exposed for sale within the whole area of the metropolis. Making an estimate of the most moderate kind, we may assume that 30,000 pounds weight of bad meat are weekly offered for sale in London--_three million pounds weight annually_. Many persons have been affected with dysentery and choleraic symptoms after partaking of butcher's meat of apparently the most healthy kind. The meat has often been subjected to minute chemical and microscopical examination, but no poison has been discovered. But these cases are becoming so frequent that they are exciting uneasiness, and demand an exhaustive investigation. The unskilful persons who officiate in the capacity of "clerks of the market" and inspectors of meat can only judge of the quality of flesh that is obviously inferior to the eye, nose, or touch; but are there not cases where the flesh may appear to be good, and yet contain some subtle malign principle? It is an ascertained fact that young or "slink" veal very frequently gives rise to diarrhoea, more especially when that disease is epidemic. Dr. Parkes, in his celebrated work on Hygiene, page 162 (second edition), states that "the flesh of the pig sometimes produced diarrhoea--a fact I have had occasion to notice in a regiment in India, and which has often been noticed by others. The flesh is, probably, affected by the unwholesome garbage on which the pig feeds." Menschell states that 44 persons were afflicted with anthrax after eating the flesh of oxen affected with carbuncular fever. Dr. Kesteren, in the _Medical Times_ for March, 1864, mentions a case where twelve persons were affected with choleraic symptoms after the use of pork not obviously diseased. At Newtownards, county of Down, several persons died after eating veal in which no poisonous matter of any kind could be detected. One instance has come under my own notice where a man, two dogs, and a pig died after eating the flesh of an animal killed whilst suffering from splenic apoplexy. Several butchers have lost their lives in consequence of the blood of diseased animals being allowed to come in contact with abrasions or recently received wounds on their arms. The flesh of over-driven animals is stated by Professor Gamgee to produce a most serious skin disease, although the meat appeared to be perfectly healthy. The Belgian Academy of Medicine has decided that the flesh of animals suffering from carbuncular fever is unwholesome, and its sale in that country is prohibited.