Many persons have died in Germany and a few in England from a disease produced by eating pork containing a small internal parasite termed _trichina spiralis_. I have recently met with a case of _trichiniasis_ in the human subject. The body of the unfortunate person--who had been an inmate of the South Dublin Union Workhouse--was found to contain thousands of the trichinæ. In Iceland a large proportion of the population suffers from a parasitic disease traceable to the use of the flesh of sheep and cattle in which flukes abound. Pleuro-pneumonia is in this country the disease which most frequently affects the ox. It is probable that about 5 per cent. of these animals sold in Dublin are more or less affected by this malady. There are two forms of pleuro-pneumonia--the sporadic, or indigenous, and the foreign, or contagious. It is the latter form which has become the scourge of the ox tribe in this country, though unknown here until the year 1841, when it appeared as an epizoötic, and carried off vast numbers of animals. The contagious pleuro-pneumonia is an extremely severe inflammatory disease, and is produced--not in the same way that common pleuro-pneumonia is, by exposure to excessive cold, &c.--but by a blood poison received from an infected animal. In the congestive stage of the disease there is no structural alteration in the organs of the animal, and if well bled its flesh might (probably) be safely eaten; but when a large portion of the lungs becomes solidified, and rendered incapable of purifying the blood, is it not doubtful, to say the least, that the blood or flesh is perfectly wholesome? The blood, during the life of the animal, is in a state of fermentation; there is extreme fever, and the animal presents all the characteristic symptoms of acute disease. On being killed, the flesh, if the disease be of a fortnight's duration, will usually be extremely dark, but in a less advanced stage of the malady the flesh will generally present a healthy appearance. Is it really so? That is the question which science has to determine. Going upon a broad principle, I can hardly conceive that so serious a disease as pleuro-pneumonia does not injuriously affect the quality of the flesh. It is no argument to say that thousands consume such flesh, and yet enjoy good health. Millions of people drink water and breathe air that are extremely impure, and yet they do not speedily die. It is one thing to be poisonous, another to be unwholesome. The flesh of animals killed whilst suffering from lung distemper is not directly poisonous, but who can prove that it is not, like bad water, unwholesome? As analyst to the city of Dublin, I am almost daily called upon to inspect meat suspected to be unwholesome; and I have always condemned as being unfit for human food:-- 1. Animals slaughtered at the time of bringing forth their young.