A treatise on public slaughter-houses, considered in connection with the sanitary question : describing the practice of slaughtering in France and England, with an historical and statistical account of the abattoirs of Paris, and accompanied by plans, with the view to the introduction of similar establishments into England / By Richard B. Grantham, C.E.

  • Grantham, Richard B. (Richard Boxall)
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on public slaughter-houses, considered in connection with the sanitary question : describing the practice of slaughtering in France and England, with an historical and statistical account of the abattoirs of Paris, and accompanied by plans, with the view to the introduction of similar establishments into England / By Richard B. Grantham, C.E. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The solid matters of the putrefying body pass, by the active change it is undergoing, into volatile products, which mix with the atmosphere and com- municate the taint to a wide circle around the neglected body. We all know that we cannot breathe this tainted atmosphere in the vicinity of its origin, without disgust and loathing ; but we do not know, or at least we refuse to profit by the knowledge, that these sensations are the symptoms of an injurious influence on the living body, which, if continued, would produce disease and death. There is no fact more clearly demonstrated by ex- perience, than that the putrefaction of animal sub- stances is capable of transmission to other similar substances, whether these be living or dead. Chemically speaking, putrefaction is a change of form which the elements of the putrefying body assume, under certain circumstances, by the opera- tion of certain laws. Let us see what are the elements of animal matter, and what are the cir- cumstances under which they assume that change which we call putrefaction. Chemistry teaches us that the material world, wonderfully diversified as it appears, has been formed by the Great Creator out of a few kinds of matter. By analysis, the resolution or splitting up of complex bodies into bodies of a more simple kind, we find that we can reduce all substances, however various their appearance and properties, into a few species of matter, the variety /