The adulteration of food.

Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The adulteration of food. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    eaters of the tropical regions of the earth. These and other dangerous prepa- rations have been well detected and exposed by Dr. Idassall, and are de- scribed in his book, which will repay frequent consultation, whether we re- fer to the letterpress, or to the bota- nical drawings, in which important vegetables are most truthfully deli- neated, and which are of great value not only as helps to detect impos- ture, but as records of scientific observations. After all the extra- ordinary revelations contained in this volume of the infamous con- dition of the articles sold in the provision-shops of the metropolis, we must confess that we were not merely surprised but shocked to find a literary critic making the extraordinary statement that the perusal of l)r. Hassall’s book had raised the character of the Lon- don shopkeepers in his opinion. We very much question if such a total disconnexion between pre- mises and conclusion were ever before perpetrated. Take but the limited statistics which we have given in this article, and say if in many substances of vital import- ance to life and health it were pos- sible for the parties accused to com- mit greater frauds ? or if the facts which have recently been revealed have not occasioned a kind of ge- neral want of confidence in all con- nected with the supply of the ne- cessaries of life P Such superficial opinions, propounded for popular purposes, are mischievous in the highest degree, and degrade litera- ture and science through such or- gans of the press as give utterance to them. The Lancet has con- firmed preceding experience, which has shown that no dependence is to be placed on the virtuous self-lauda- tion of advertising dealers in refer- ence to their stocks. A notorious murderer and tea-dealer distin- guished himself by libellous attacks on his fellow tradesmen, which he suspended in his shop windows, while it is said he never laid in a more expensive stock of the Chinese vegetable, than what could be pro- cured from the most convenient hawthorn hedges in the suburbs of town. A magistrate brought some tea one day to a chemical physi- cian, complaining that although it was obtained from one of the best houses it would not draw. From its weight suspicion might have been aroused. The magistrate’s friend, taking out his penknife, previously rubbed on a magnet, plunged it into the leaves, and withdrew it covered with iron filings. Is respectability of cha- racter a thorough safeguard against adulteration P We think not, unless the respectable uses the means for detecting the sophistication. Is it right in the Government to allow advertisements to appear in the newspapers, asserting that some unknown matter is valuable as a food for children, as long as the community are so badly educated as to give credit to every paragraph that appears in print, indited by the hand of mercenary empirics, and when even individuals who ought to know better write such a letter as the following to the adver- tising gentry ? Sirs,—I am free to assure you that I have no ill will whatever to your pre- parations, which I have heard well spoken of in i*espectable quarters, and may very likely order for a trial on my own account ere long—I am Sirs, your obedient servant. To make such experiments on human health appears to us most melancholy. To ascertain the wholesomeness of an article of diet would require many days of hard labour on the part of a chemical physician of decided character, since the chemical composition of food is now understood. It is not, therefore, required that every man should make trials on himself as to the nutritive or injurious influence of aliment. After the fearful exposures of the adulteration of meal which were made in Scotland during the period when the Government fed the starving Highlanders, and the Goldner infamy, the system of con- tract without scientific supervision seems impracticable. The value of the check thus properly exercised by the Excise for many years has rendered the adulteration of tobacco and snuff a comparative rarity. The absence of an equally stringent in- spection of drugs is an argument in the same direction, since, although