Rabbits
"'Their Flesh Shall Ye Not
Eat'"
“Some interest has lately been aroused by a mysterious case of poisoning at an English country house, where the entire corps of servants, eight or more in number, were made very ill from eating rabbit pie, one of the number dying.
The Daily Chronicle commenting upon this says:-
"Any doubt cast upon the wholesomeness of the rabbit as an article of food will alarm a very large proportion of the humbler population of this country. Thanks to the reproductive habits of the rabbit itself, and also to the fact that it serves as an object of sport to so many people, its flesh forms one of the cheapest articles of animal food. Dr. Stevenson, however, the eminent analyst to the Home Office, stated in his evidence at the inquest on the servant who died of eating rabbit-pie, that in the course of his experience he had found large numbers of live rabbits affected with micro-organisms to such an alarming extent that they frequently died in consequence. The organisms, he added, were generally killed by cooking, but this could not be taken as a safeguard."
In the eleventh chapter of Leviticus may be found the word of the Lord Himself to Moses directing him as to what animals were fit for food and what were not. This is the counsel of Him who created these animals, therefore no more competent expert testimony could possibly be had. In the sixth verse of this chapter the hare is especially mentioned as being unfit for food, and the eighth verse says, "of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch: they are unclean to you." The prohibition even of contact with the dead body of these animals would seem to suppose a possible condition of poisonous virulence, which, in the light of investigations of modern science, we know would be accompanied by the very condition which Dr. Stevenson names.”
August 20, 1896 EJW, PTUK 542
E. J. Waggoner