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might conceivably eradicate the disease. But no one has yet had the courage or hardihood to seriously recommend the adoption of that system.

In this respect Queensland and Great Britain are on an entirely different footing. In Australia the system of compulsory slaughter is out of the question, owing to the extensive foothold that the disease has now obtained in the country. Fortunately, with us the circum­stances are different, and we may yet entertain the hope of being able not merely to hold the disease in check, but to actually suppress it.

THE INSPECTION OF MEAT.

To everyone who has bestowed any serious thought upon the subject, it must for some time have been obvious that radical changes are urgently demanded in the methods of meat inspection carried out in this country. Recent research has proved that man and some of the lower species whose flesh is consumed for human food are in common the subjects of dangerous maladies determined by the presence of specific micro-organisms. We need mention only anthrax, tuberculosis, and actinomycosis as examples of such affections. It has further been proved that several of these diseases are readily transmissible to many different species of the lower animals by causing them to ingest portions of the tissues or organs taken from other animals that have been the natural victims of such affections, and there is every reason to believe that the result would be the same if man himself were made the subject of experiment.

Several of the diseases of this class are of common occurrence in the animals that are daily slaughtered for human food, and without proper means to insure that only sound and wholesome carcases shall be allowed to leave our abattoirs, or be exposed for sale in our dead­meat markets, human beings will be constantly exposed to a manifest risk of purchasing in the form of food what is veritable poison. The medical man or veterinary surgeon who does not see this must be wilfully blind.

To illustrate this danger two instances that have come under our own observation within the past few months may be cited. A bullock, one of several similarly attacked, was killed at the point of death. Portions of this animal's spleen came into our possession, and a micro­scopic examination proved beyond any doubt that the animal had been the subject of anthrax. It was subsequently learned, when too late, that the carcase of the bullock had been sold to a manufacturer of sausages, the characters of the flesh rendering it unsaleable in the ordinary way.

The landlady of two veterinary students when about to cook a piece of beef for their dinner observed on it something abnormal. The piece of meat was brought to the Veterinary College, and a naked-

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eye inspection, confirmed by a microscopic examination, sbowed that what had attracted the landlady's attention were tubercles embedded in the intercostal fat.

There is no reason to believe that these are rare or isolated cases. Both of them occurred in districts in which there is at least a nominal inspection of the meat, and, as is well known to everybody, a great proportion of the animal food consumed in this country is not sub­mitted to any inspection whatever.

But what is required is not merely inspection, but efficient inspection. At the present time in many places there is an inspection which is a mere mockery of what it ought to be. Take, fdr example, the case of Glasgow. In that great city, if the carcases of animals are inspected at all, it is by policemen. Until the month of April last, when a butcher objected to the condemnation of a carcase belonging to him the recognised procedure was to appeal to a sort of high court composed of two butchers and the police surgeon, and, as may be readily believed, the arrangement was one that gave great satis­faction to the butchers. These facts were brought to light in the recent tuberculous meat case tried in Glasgow. It would not be too strong language to characterise such a state of affairs as scandalous and disgraceful, and, apart from all other considerations, the Glasgow trial has served a most useful purpose in directing public attention to a wanton disregard of proper precautions to conserve the public health.

In many other cities the system of meat inspection is not one whit better than it has been in Glasgow. Birmingham has not even a public abattoir, and it has 300 private slaughter-houses supervised by two inspectors. In the borough of Leeds, again, there are about 300 slaughter-houses scattered over an area of 33 square miles.

Such a state of things will not be tolerated much longer. The time is at hand when medical and veterinary knowledge will be called upon to declare what diseases of the lower animals shall be considered as rendering the flesh of these animals unfit for the food of man. This point cannot be left to the whims and caprices of police­men, or even to individual medical officers of health or veterinary inspectors. When once it has been authoritatively declared that such and such diseases shall exclude the carcases of animals so affected from sale as an article of human food, then an organised and com­pulsory system of veterinary inspection must be carried out in connec­tion with our abattoirs and dead-meat markets. Finally, the slaughtering of animals for food except in public and licensed abattoirs must be prohibited.

A word of warning may h~re be addressed to the veterinary profes­sion. We hold that on veterinary surgeons must devolve the work of meat inspection, but we are very far from admitting that the veterinary diploma is sufficient evidence that its possessor is competent to

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discharge the duties of efficient meat inspection. It is obvious that no one who has not a knowledge of animal diseases is qualified for such an appointment, but it is equally apparent that to carry out in a reliable manner the work of meat inspection will demand a degree of pathological skill which cannot safely be assumed to be possessed by every qualified veterinary practitioner. Candidates will have to be subjected to a searching written and practical examination bearing on the special duties of meat inspectors-a practice which we believe is now followed in making such appointments in France.

THE DISHORNING OF CATTLE.

ACCORDING to a recent judgment delivered by Lord Coleridge and Mr Justice Hawkins, in the case of Ford v. Wiley, the practice of dishorning cattle is a cruel, unreasonable, and unnecessary abuse of the animals operated upon, is therefore illegal, and ought to be suppressed. During the course of last year, in the Justiciary Appeal Court held at Edinburgh, with reference to a similar case, judgment was given by Lords Young, M'Laren, and Rutherford Clark, to the effect that the operation of dishorning was not one of cruelty within the meaning of the Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and therefore that it was not illegal. Accordingly, at the present moment the dishorning of cattle is a perfectly legitimate operation when practised in Scotland, but it is illegal when performed in England. The decision given by the English judges is regrettable, not only because it is undesirable that there should exist such a grave anomaly in the administration of the law in the two countries, but also because the judgment appears to be based on principles that may, with very little straining, be applied to the interdicting of what have hitherto been regarded as most legitimate surgical operations.

In connection with the decision given by the English Court, it may be asked, \Vhat are the circumstances that render an operation cruel as opposed to painful? It is inconceivable that the veterinary surgeons who gave evidence for the prosecution in the case of Ford v. Wiley, and who almost every day of their lives perform on the lower animals painful operations, could have intended to support the proposition that every painful operation deserves the epithet cruel. These witnesses would, we have no doubt, promptly reply to the point here raised by saying that a painful surgical operation practised on one of the lower animals is cruel when it is unnecessary.

But what is to be the criterion of necessity in these cases? In the first place, it may be contended that man is not justified in performing a painful operation on one of the lower animals, or at least one of our domesticated animals, except in circumstances similar to those that warrant the infliction of pain on a human being-that, in other words.