WHAT WE CALL sanitation, God, in a sense, calls physical sanctification; and what we call right living, He calls righteous living.
What we see to be desirable, or good, He calls virtuous. Only those things whose physical effects or ultimate outworkings were baneful, were forbidden by Him as moraly bad. Moral authority rests just here, in that the thing condemned as immoral will eventually produce baneful physical results.
To those who would enjoy His greatest mercies of health and happiness, God in the Law specifically describes the various birds, fishes and animals whose flesh may be safely eaten, and forbids the use of the others. He, for instance, especially prohibited the eating of swine's flesh, and licenses as eatable the bodies of only such animals as divided the hoof and chewed the cud. Why was this distinction made? It has a reason in the deepseated nature of things; but it is primarily physiological, dietetic, and hygenic rather than a moral question.
The animals that chewed the cud and divided the hoof, such as the ox, sheep, goat, deer, buffalo, etc., because of the saculated condition of the alimentary canal and the secondary cud receptacle, have practically three stomachs, as refining agencies and cleansing laboratories, for the purifying of their food; thus weeding out frmo their systems most of the poisonous and deleterious matter.
It thus takes clean, vegetable food over twenty-four hours to be turned into flesh, which flesh even the pre-Mosaic law said was clean. This was not mere ceremonial cleansing, but it was hygienically and physiologically and dietarily clean and wholesome. There is practically but one disease in the human system and that is blood poison from wrong living. This takes on a thousand symptoms and the doctors give these many foreign names.
The dietary habits of all such vegetarian animals were also clean, in comparison with that of the omnivorous swine. On examining the swin's anatomy, we find that, as a supplement to his bad appetite he has but one poorly constructed stomach arrangement, and very limited excretory organs generally. Consequently, in about three hours after he has eaten his polluted swill, putrid carrion, or other offensive matter, man may eat the same in second-hand style off the ribs of the pig.
This flesh the Law condemns as unclean; not merely ceremonially unclean, but hygienically and physiologically as well. In the nature of things, it is gross, diseased, and deadly; manufactured out of the basest, most diseased and polluted material, and in the crudest and speediest way. The diet of the pig is so deadly that it generally kills the animal itself in about eight or ten years. This is posibly caused, in part at least, by the powerful disinfectant and germicidal element that nature kindly thrusts into the system of all carnivorous and some omnivorous creatures.
The swine is a scavenger, the turkey buzzard of the animal kingdom, the hyena or jackal of civilization; and, notwithstanding the preaching of some to the contrary, God has never cleansed or sanctified or transformed him. Even his hams have to be cured.
Those who kept this divine and pre-Mosaic law were to be blessed with health and happiness, and those who broke it were to be cursed with disease and death; but hte bliss or blight is automatica and imparted, in measure, as men act. The flesh of the swine is, by many authorities on the subject, said to be the prime cause of much of our American ill-health; causing blood diseases, weakness of the stomach, and liver troubles; also the consumption, cancer, tumors, eczema, etc.
These deadly disease were unknown among the non-pork-eating Hebrews when they observed the Law. There is said to be no word for cancer in the original Hebrew language, nor is the word in the New Testament, because God's eastern people were not swine-eaters. Our cold western winters largely form our slim defense against blood poison and death from our base bill of fare.
If you examine carefully you will find a small abrasion behind the front foot of the pig. Rub it off clean and press the leg, just above the abrasion, and you may squeeze a teaspoonful of dirty matter from it. This is original pork gravy. It is an outlet to a sewer-pipe that may be traced all through the animal's body. It helps to drain off the teeming filth with which the system is filled. If this external opening becomes clogged, the animal will run about and grunt and rub his leg on anything handy, and manifest great pain. He seems almost to know that he will soon sicken of so-called cholera and blood-poison, and die of his own internal filth, unless he keeps this sewer open.
On a close analysis of this filthy scrofulous serum, or the culture of its bacilli under varied conditions, it is seen to contain the elements of many dangerous diseases and combination; yet how toothsome is pickled pig's feet to ignorance, unbelief, and disobedience. It is this internal and intrinsic vileness that causes a large percentage of our hogs to be filled with trichina and results in such havoc to human health.
Comment from Tim Knight, January 16, 2011
In my four years working closely with the water and waste sanitation practices in hog production I have never heard of such a thing. There is no such organ on the feet of or effluent system in a pig.
The nearest possibility is Foot-and-mouth disease as you can read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-and-mouth_disease
The animal has a very efficient waste removal system, similar to humans, and excretes about 6 - 9 litres of 95% liquid waste daily for the average 250lb 'finisher' pig.
Sanitation in hog production is of the highest importance in operations that sell to public markets, both locally and overseas. Most of our pork comes from the US and much of theirs comes from Canada and Europe. I have been in many production barns and can vouch for the animal health practices Canada uses. If such a physiological system existed on a pig it would be of critical importance as hoof-and-mouth virus is quite able to vary its strain and therefore tough to vaccinate against.
We might be excused for diverting our attention from the scientific side of this discussion long enough to insert a few remarks on this Heaven-forbidden American delicacy. This creature that has been condemned both logically and theologically, takes precedence with ignorance, over all the creatures of creation as an article of diet. He, of all creatures, is literally devoured.
As articles of diet, Moses condemns by name and description all purely carnivorous birds and animals, and modern science discovers a poisonous substance in their flesh — a secondary result of flesh-eating. His description is practically the distinction between the turkey and the turkey buzzard.
To see that diet has much to do with disposition as well as disease, one has but to compare the vegetarian animals, such as the ox, sheep, deer, goat, buffalo, horse, etc., with the flesh-eating lion, tiger, lynx, jaguar, cat, etc. Hygienic and dietary science today in every land, acknowledge a basic soundness in these Mosaic and pre-Mosaic prohibitions.
The fowls and fishes sanctioned by the Mosaic bill of fare, are designated on this same principle of eternal fitness, in the nature of things. The creatures rejected are insectivorous or carnivorous, or have a dearth of digestive and assimilative purity. Those that are accepted have a distinctive gizzard and scale-arrangement that constitute a peculiar grinding, refining and cleansing laboratory, which, with their purer dietary, largely assure physiological exemption from disease in their flesh.
This is especially true of the pheasant family, including the chicken and turkey. Their dirty diet would make their bodies deadly were it not for the peculiar gizzard-like arrangement. The scale-less fishes and all shell fish, including the oyster, clam, lobster, etc., modern science discovers to be but lumps of vitalized and disease-producing filth, because of inadequate excretion.
So vile are these creatures, that even the densest ignorance can be induced to use them only in our coldest seasons. If they were to be used in warm countries, like Palestine, or in warm seasons here, they would prove as ruinous to health as Moses declared they would be. On the bodies of shell fish, and protected by their shells, disease bacteria of various kinds often find prolific breeding places. Like excessive pork eaters, the users of shell-fish delicacy owe much to the cold seasons for the preservation of their lives.
The lives also of all flesh-eating animals are not only made thereby vicious and pugnacious, but are also shortened in comparison to the lives of vegetarian animals. Modern science has forced the world to respect and accept the Mosaic bill of fare as hygienic. God knew the deadly tendency of the flesh diet generally, especially in warm countries, and thus guarded His people against its secondary influence.
In the two enunciations of the Adamic bill of fare, attributed to the Almighty by Moses, in Genesis the first and third chapters, there is a comprehensive and scientific hygiene which proves that Moses was inspired, or otherwise an expert in modern hygiology four thousand years ago.
In the first instance, Moses says Adam was told by the Lord that the human dietary was to be from the herbs and trees in which were fruit-bearing seed in themselves, while to all the birds and animals He gave the green herb for meat. This was before Adam disobeyed and fell, when he was given a dietary suitable to the unlimited longevity that was presumably to be his.
After he had fallen, he was permissively cursed with lingering miseries, which would make his slowly approaching death an educational mercy. He was told that he would eat of the herb of the field. He had lowered himself to the level of the mere animals and hence was permitted to eat of their food. Notice that, according to Moses, God did not command Adam to eat of the herb of the field, but just simply called attention to the fact that he would do so, in his ignorance, which was a fruit of his fallen state.
Ere we look at the nature of this distinction, we desire to ask: Who can say that the new and gross dietary was to have no part in the miseries, ignorance, and death that was to follow? Why was this distinction made? It involves the difference between all fruits, nuts, and cereals, etc., on the one hand, and mere vegetables on the other. This is God's distinction.
Now, some may not recognize the clear outline that exists between the cereals and the mere vegetables. All cereals, fruits, and nuts, as resultant offspring from the original vegetable body, are doubly removed from the filth and pioson that is known to be in the fertility of the chemical drift, and often also in the irrigating water; while the mere vegetable has no such opportunity of chemically purifying itself.
In the case of vegetables, called here the green herb of the field, as cabbage, turnips, beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, etc., the whole body is eaten. Not so with the fruits, nuts and cereals, for here the chemistry of life, in a sort of second growth out of the original body (which is itself discarded as not edible), produces the pure nutritious fruit. The varied, mystic and vital forces latent in the seed, selected from the crude and urnefined chemic substances the elements to compose the particular body of the tree, bush, vine, cornstalk, straw, etc.
Then, partially from refined substance of their own bodies, through the medium of this vital, self-action, complex machine, they are enabled to much more perfectly purify and refine the chemical elements which enter into their fruits and grains, as the seed and source of future life.
Chemical analysis proves this, and while granting common identity between the substances of the vine or the tree and its fruits; between the stalk and the bean, yet it discovers much greater purity, refinement and condensed nutrition in the latter than in the former. In fact herein is found the natural reason for many of the mere vegetables, such as beets, turnips, parsnips, etc., requiring two years in which to produce seed. The first season is spent in refining and storing pulp, and in constructing the more crude, physical machine of the stalk or body, from which and through which to produce in the next season, the more delicate, nutritious and condensed life kernels.
Animals may browse the berry bushes and branches of the fruit trees, but not so with man. Animals may eat the straw of the oats, barley, wheat, corn, beans, peas, etc., but many may not. Animals were divinely intended to eat the coarse, pulpy body of the green herb, while man was largely to have a purer, a more nutritious, intensive and healthful diet.
Now to show the particular value of this distinction, the true botanist, the chemist, and hygienist, all declare that there is generally an average of between five and twenty-five percent of nutrition in mere vegetables, and between sixty and ninety per cent of nutrition in cereals and nuts. The fruits are generally acknowledged as nutritious, germicidal appetizers, palatable laxatives, and system cleansers in general.
To more perfectly prove this point, we have but to remember that when we want to either fatten or strengthen an animal, we give it grains, while vegetation in the best sense supplies neither. A horse, a cow, sheep, or even a chicken, deprived of grain, shows poor results. Thus, also many a man, woman and child, is undernourished, if not half-starved, on a purely vegetable diet. A return to the diet of pure cereals, nuts and fruits would produce to humanity the best results in health, intelligence, and longevity.
This bill of fare, which is now being recognized and advocated by all advanced hygienists, and but lately inaugurated in the best of our sanitariums, was clearly set forth by Moses, the law-giver, four thousand years ago, as God's distinction given nearly two thousand years before that. If Moses was not inspired of God, we ask how did he come to be four millennia ahead of the scientists with their modern bill of fare?
Transcription of a pamphlet printed by THE COVENANT PEOPLE'S ADVOCATES Curtis Clair Ewing, Director 11411 - 121st Ave. E., Puyallup, WA 98374 Phone (206) 841-0280