| Item Description: | In Fraktur.
Michael Laird, bookseller, description: Issued by the Munich Association Against Animal Cruelty for the year 1843. The first page of text presents several aspects of the pastor's ethical treatise on animals and their "psychic properties" to wit: "God is the creator of animals as well as men; He has given the animals a body constructed of bones, flesh and blood, wonderfully built and furnished, capable of feeling pleasant and unpleasant sensations. The structure of the human body can be compared with that of animals in various gradations. The wise Creator has given to the animals an (albeit mortal) soul which knows how to judge pleasant and unpleasant things, whether to be pleased or grieved, or indifferent. The animals, like men, have five senses, intelligence (more or less), memory, judgment, free will, and attachments to good and evil. The animals are the closest relatives in the great creation of Man; their physical and spiritual qualities approach Man, who is the highest creature on earth and master of all other creatures. Great scholars such Aristotle, Pliny, Linnaeus, Haller, Aelia, Burdach, Buffon, Zschokke, Scheitlin, and innumerable others have scrutinized, examined, and compared with the human being the physical and spiritual qualities of the animals. True, there are people who are of limited mind, who out of prejudice deny to the animals mental qualities [...]." This was an early call for slaughterhouse reforms in Germany by animal protection societies, which reached their zenith in the 1880s and 1890s. The sought the licensing of slaughterers, restricting the slaughterhouse to men only, the implimentation of stricter inspection procedures, and the stunning of animals into a state of unconsciousness before their slaughter. These Saxon societies admonished that the slaughter of animals of conscious animals could affect people's behavior towards one another and lead to violence, domestic and otherwise. |
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