THE SWINE – AN ANIMAL THAT KILLS!
Note: This report is from a 1949-1956 survey.
A casually eaten hot dog at an amusement park, a hamburger consumed at a roadside stand, or a delectable piece of meat hastily cooked in a restaurant may be the initial step in the contraction of a serious and painful disease whose last stages are delirium, high fever, and death. This treacherous disease, trichinosis, whose variable symptoms are seldom correctly diagnosed, has infected an estimated 16,000,000 persons in the United States according to the U.S. Public Health Service which, under its Surgeon General Dr.Thomas Parran, has for a number of years carried on extensive research on this malady. The first chapter in the deadly history of trichinosis is written in the pig sty.The last is frequently sealed on the postmortem table. The story is not a pretty one. The pig, which is the average American’s future hot dog, pork chop, or what have you, contracts the disease most frequently from eating garbage of uncooked pork containing the hair-like worm Trichinella spiralis, or occasionally he gets the disease from infected rats found about the pig sty.
“Upon indigestion of the third stage larvae in infected muscle,” states one of America’s greatest researchers on this problem, “the larvae are freed from the cyst by the action of the gastric juice and then proceed to migrate to the intestine. Here they develop to maturity and after fertilization the adult worms produce living embryos which invade the blood stream and are carried to all, or nearly all,of the voluntary muscles of the body. These embryos develop in a relatively short time to third stage larvae in the muscles.”
The larvae remain alive during the low heat processing which transforms the swine flesh into summer sausages, wienerwurst, pepperoni, frankfurters, etc.
When consumed by humans, the digestive juices in the stomach dissolve the capsule around the coiled worms and set them free. The young larvae born in the small intestine then begin to take their horrible toll. They travel through the body via the blood stream and lymphatics, and many lodge either temporarily or permanently in the glands and lymph nodes, brain, heart, skeletal muscles, or other tissue.
Because the worms may lodge anywhere in the body, and thus damage almost any organ in the victim, the symptoms of the disease vary greatly from one sufferer to the other, and are very similar to the symptoms of other diseases, both infectious and non-infectious, the malady is difficult to diagnose. Many doctors frequently do not even suspect trichinosis when their patients are actually suffering from it. In “Studies on Trichinosis”, a U.S. Public Health Report, number 111, subtitled “The complex clinical picture of trichinosis and the diagnosis of the disease,” Professor Maurise C. Hall reports that a study of cadavers from hospitals disclosed that out of 222 cases of trichinosis not one was correctly diagnosed. Invaluable research on the incidence and degree of infection with Trichinella spiralis among the population of America has been carried on under the skilful supervision of Dr. Willard H. Wright, Chief of the U. S. Zoology laboratory.
The reason why this dangerous disease is so difficult to diagnose can be seen from a list of symptoms and diagnoses taken from the U.S. Public Health Reports. In each case only a few of the symptoms and diagnoses from the list are given here. When the larvae and adult worm lodge in the intestinal regions, the symptoms may be diarrhoea, constipation, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, cold sweats, and fever. Doctors have diagnosed the condition as ptomaine poisoning, intestinal influenza, malaria, typhoid fever, appendicitis, colitis, peptic ulcers, gall bladder involvement and acute alcoholism. The patients were actually suffering from trichinosis. When the larvae, carried in blood, lodge in the muscles, the symptoms may be: anaemia, neuritis, cough, or hiccough. Doctors have diagnosed the condition as scarlet fever, measles, mumps, frontal sinusitis, rheumatism, tuberculosis, undulant fever, and lead poisoning.The patients were actually suffering from trichinosis. When the larvae lodge in the heart, the disease is diagnosed as anyone of a number of heart conditions. When the larvae lodge in the brain and meninges, doctors have diagnosed the disease as meningitis, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis), tubercular meningitis. The patients were actually suffering from trichinosis. In the words of the Public Health Report,
“From the above, it appears that diagnosis of approximately 50 disease conditions may be made, and in practically all cases have been made, when the actual basis of these conditions is the presence of trichinae.”
Millions of people in America harbour in their muscle tissue larvae of Trichinella spiralis. One reason for this condition is the fact that pork is so widely used as an adulterant in meat products. The Public Health Report concludes that “of the total persons dying in the United States over the period of these surveys, one out of six was infected with the trichina parasite.” One group in America, however, is almost untouched by Trichinosis. That group is composed of those who adhere to the Laws of Moses. The U.S.Public Health Report of August 27, 1943, written by Willard H. Wright, K. B. Kerr and Leon Jacobs, called attention to this fact after much research. The researchers state “this survey amply demonstrates the protection afforded by adherence to the Mosaic Code” Observance of the Mosaic law, then, protects mankind from trichinosis. But trichinosis, horrible as it is, is only one disease that afflicts the man who flouts the law of Sinai and eats the flesh of swine. Dr. J. H. Kellogg, in his study, “Scientific View of the Hog,” shows that the hog is such a dangerous carrier of disease because the animal is diseased itself. The lungs of the hog are frequently filled with large numbers of tubercles;
“in seventy-five cases out of a hundred you will find the liver filled with abscesses;”
the diseased liver upon closer inspection will be found to contain sacs in which are living tapeworms. Dr. Kellogg then shows that the excess fat of the pig is not a natural or healthy condition, but results from the animal’s inability, to throw off impurities.
“Consequently this flood of disease,” writes Dr. Kellogg, “was crowded out of the veins and arteries into the tissues, and there accumulated as fat. Lard, then, is nothing more than extract of a diseased carcass.”
Freedom from bodily ills is only one reason for the law of the clean and the unclean. Perhaps corruption of the very spirit goes hand in hand with corruption of the flesh by unclean foods.* Have you ever wondered how it is possible for some men to degenerate to the level of beasts? Is it not likely that God warned against eating unclean animals because of the mental as well as the physical diseases which their consumption through generations may bring about? As you no doubt know, modern food substances in the body can have a telling effect on a person’s mind and spirit. A courageous fighter can be turned into a nervous, frightened weakling if certain essential vitamins are withheld from his diet. (Perhaps we are only beginning to understand that what you eat influences what you are.) God, whose wisdom surpasses that of the most enlightened scientist, surely was aware of the influence of food on mind and body when he made a distinction between animals which are meant for food and those which were created to eat upon the world’s filth.
“Mine ordinances shall ye do, and my statutes shall ye keep to walk therein: I am Jehovah your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and mine ordinances which if a man do he shall live in them: I am Jehovah. “
Those who keep the law, then, will live in it. And what of those who forsake it? Isaiah warns them in chapter 66:16-17:
“For by fire will Jehovah judge, and by his sword against all flesh and the slain of Jehovah will greatly increase. They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves for the gardens behind one in the midst, they who eat the flesh of the swine, and the abomination, and the mouse, together shall they perish, saith Jehovah.”
Let us say with the psalmist:
“I have remembered Thy name, O God, in the night; And have observed thy law.”
* There are many ‘unclean’ foods – prawns, squid, ducks, lobsters, oysters and any shell fish are a few which immediately come to mind.
Courtesy: ‘Kingdom Treasure’, USA
