THE VETERINARIAN.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 691, 29 May 1885, Page 11

THE VETERINARIAN.

PAINLESS SLAUGHTER. At a recent meeting of the Society of Arts Ur. B. W Richardson delivered a lecture on “The Painless Extinction of Life in the Lower Animals.” He said that during the early part of the present year he had, at the request of the committee of the Dogs’ Home, Battersea, constructed a lethal chamber there for the painless extinction of the life of the animals which have of necessity to be destroyed there. He put the process into operation on May 15th by subjecting 38 dogs to the fatal narcotic vapour. They all passed quickly into sleep, and from sleep into death, and since that time from 200 to 250 dogs per week had been painlessly killed in the chamber, or a total of nearly 7,000. The results of this procedure had been so exceptionally large and so entirely practical and successful that he felt the time had now come when they ought to be brought fully into public record. The lecturer then proceeded to give a short history of the process, after which he described the difficulties he had experienced, first, in determining on the anaesthetic to be used ; and, secondly, in the

construction of the chamber in which the animals should be confined while exposed to the lethal gas or vapour. After anxious consideration, he was led to carbonate oxide as the anaesthetic, not only by witnessing the effects of it as a poison when breathed from coke fumes, but specially from studying its action when evolved from the fumes of the Lycoperdon giganteum, or common puff-ball. Tire chamber into which the narcotic is introduced i 3 made of double walls of wellseasoned timber, the interspace being closely packed with sawdust, and is filled with the vapour by means of stoves. The chamber being thus p.-epared, the cage containing the animals destined to be killed is by meaps of slides pushed into it, and the door closed. The last requirement which had to met was the means of knowing when the narcotised animals had ceased to breathe, and this is done by a long trumpet-shaped stethoscope, made of bamboo. On listening through this tube the continued breathing of even a single animal can be detected, and the operators are enabled to determine if it be proper to increase the strength of the narcotic atmosphere or to stop it. This process is simply applied to small domestic animals, such a 3 dogs, cats, and birds. As to the painless destruction of those animals which supply us with food, in respect of some of them the painless death waa qu’te feasible. By means of carbonic oxide sheep could be put to sleep with the greatest rapidity before they were slaughtered. He had submitted 40 sheep in this way to painless death, and found that no bad effect whatever was produced in the flesh or unfitting it for food. The objection to retention of blood, so strongly felt by the Jewish people, does not obtain, the animals in the narcotic state yielding up blood just as freely as in the ordinary way when no narcotic is used. The same process may be equally applicable to swine, calves, and fowls. To oxen he did not as yet see its immediate application. He did not, however, despair of making electricity practically useful in killing some of the larger animals such as horses or oxen, but at present the expense connected with this would in itself be a barrier to success.