BOOKS.

][ARCET AND SCOFFERN ON THE COMPOSITION AND ADULTERATION OF FOOD..

THERE is much exaggeration and false conclusion, if not false- hood in fact, respecting the adulteration of food. A man hold- ing forth upon Accum s suggestive text of "Death in the Pot" can make us " sup full of horrors." The very water which forms the basis of all we drink, and a principal beverage of many per- sons, may poison us, by being conveyed to us by the expen- sive and substantial mode of leaden pipes, or by .being kept in a leaden cistern. " The cup that cheers but not inebriates may infuse into our system " verdigris," " arsenite of copper," " chro- mate of lead," besides innumerable things which if not poisons are unwholesome matters that we by no means bargained. for. A man now-a-days is not bemused by beer, but by ooculus indicus, or some other drug. The dram-drinker is not excited alone by alcohol, but by capsicum and other deleterious articles. The pickles we take as a relish are made presentable by copper, and too often preserved by a liquor which passes from acidity into sourness, and inflicts the stomachic pains if not the _penalties of poison. jr,g,:y, the " sweet stuff " of innocent childhood cannot

escape. lead, antimony, carbonate of copper, with other mineral and vegetable compounds, are used to colour confec- tionary. The lover of sausages should never read about how they are made ; and though stinking fish " may not be cried it is sold. Lest our own horrors should not be enough, recourse can be had to other countries, where the cookery is universally said to be better, and the meat appears to be worse.

" It is a well-known fact, that meat preserved in the form of sausages by

exposure to smoke becomes a violent poison if allowed to undergo the first stage of decomposition previous to its being smoked. M. E. Van der Corput C The Chemist,' May 18,55, No. 20) states that, by official return, in Wurtemberg alone, during fifty years more than 400 cases of poisoning with such meat have occurred, and 150 deaths. "This poisonous effect of bad sausages was observed so far back as 1735.

Dr. Kerner collected 135 cases from 1793 to 1822, of which 84 were fatal. Dr. Weiss, of Wurtemberg, collected 19 cases in eight months, of which 6 died. In regard to the symptoms attending this kind of poisoning, they occur in general twelve or fourteen hours after having taken the food : there is much oppression, sharp pains in the stomach, nausea, vomiting, and great thirst, with irregularity of pulse, coldness of extremities, and finally syncope. Other symptoms of a nervous character accompany the latter,—as paralysis of the muscles of the pharynx and eyelids, a croupy cough, and peculiar dryness of the mucous membrane. The treatment must depend on the most prominent symptoms.

"Not only are sausages in a state of decomposition liable to produce

disease and death, but also cases of poisoning have occurred from pork- butcher's meat under similar circumstances : thus, in 18321 M. Chevalier, of Paris, had to make a report upon serious cases of poisoning from pork- butcher's meat ; no metallic poison was found in the meat, but it was noticed to be covered with a peculiar mouldiness. Many other cases of poi- soning in France with mouldy meat are recorded. Rancid fats and decayed cheese have also given rise to symptoms of poisoning."—.Marcet on the Composition of Food. That all these statements, and many others of a similar kind, can be supported by evidence, there is no doubt. That in par- ticular instances, where death or disease has directly ensued, the ease has been exceptional—an accident, not a rule—is perhaps equally clear. It is possible that improper substances introduced into food may tend to shorten life in spite of the increased longevity of the people in this country, because it is possible that they 'might live longer than they do if they lived under more favourable conditions. We do not, however, believe that life (unless as ac- cident) is shortened by poison or adulteration, but by inferior food. The most actively unwholesome things that are eaten are putrid meat and fish. The sale of this is contrary to law. If the decomposition is so far advanced as to be directly dangerous, the purchaser cannot be deceived by it, but he cannot afford better. With the exception of adulterations to gratify a fashion,—as the colouring of preserved fruits,—this fact of price lies at the root of nearly all the adulterations, or (often) substi- tutes, and so-called frauds. You can have a genuine article if you choose to pay for it. The rage for cheapness in many persons, the pressure of necessity in still greater numbers, induces people to buy what on the very face of the matter must at all events be -inferior. A man who gives sevenpence for a loaf cannot expect to have the same bread as if he paid mnepence : common sense would tell him, that it must be twopence inferior either in the material or the workmanship. A publican who sells beer by the pot at about the rate he buys it by the hogshead cannot sell it genuine. Some years ago, certain publicans advertised gin at the price of the duty, and probably they still do. The pungent flavour of that " due ruin " was doubtless owing to capsicum ; but possibly a decoction of this vegetable compounded with other things is not much more hurtful as a dram than alcohol itself. The adultera- tion of tea by the substitution of some other article is practised to • an immense extent. It is said to begin in China, and judges have doubted whether any good tea really comes to England. At home, leaves of various English plants, or the leaves of infused tea, are manufactured so as to bear a resemblance to tea ; but it is still a question of price. If John Chinaman does not send tea, you can- • On the Composition of Food, and How it is Adulterated ; with Practical Di- rections for its Analysis. By W. Marcel, F.C.S., Assistant Physician and Lecturer on Physiological and Pathological Chetnistry to the Westminster Hos- pital, 4.e., 4.c. published by Churchill. The Chemistry of Food and Diet; with a Chapter on Food Adulteration*. The Treatise on Food and Diet being a Translation of "Leh, e der Nahrungs tnitiel, fur des Volk," by Professor Noleschott, of Zurich, by Edward Brouner, The Chapter on Food Adulterations by John Scoffern, M.B. Published by Hod- Mon and Stoneman, and Orr and Co.

not have it; but you will get what he sends if you will pay the price for it. In many cases the dealer's fraud is verbal ; it consists in selling one thing for another thing . the real inferiority must be " plain to the meanest capacity." This inferiority, beyond the ratio as marked by price, is probably an exaggeration ; the alleged poison- ing, &c. decidedly so. The quantity of i colouring matter of which

the poisons consist is so s be smell as to generally, inoperative. In some cases the exaggerations are gross. The adulteration of the staff of life by alum is a common topic with trenchant writers. It is a question whether alum is injurious, at least in the proportion used in bread. It is probable that without the use of his alum and salt—technically stuff "—the baker would lose his customers : people would not like the bread ; it would be too discoloured and close. What Londoner could ever bring himself to relish home- made country bread, though genuine enough in all its materials For, as Mr. Scoffern remarks, purity in a chemical sense and fitness are two very distinct things. Some articles are useless for dietetic purposes in a perfectly pure state. Such is vinegar. Such too is alcohol.

" Frequently the medical man will be asked the question, whether gin, brandy, rum, &c., is the purest spirit. The question is totally unmeaning and unintelligible, except some previous legislative standard of purity be agreed upon. With this assumption, I suppose the chemical standard of pure alcohol, or the excise standard of proof-spirit, must be adopted ; in which case, the purest spirit will be synonymous with the strongest spirit. Such a standard, however, is practically false and inefficient : pure alcohol, like pure water, is disagreeable to the palate ; the flavour innate to it re- quires to be covered by the addition or incorporation of other flavouring matters, the presence of which latter constitutes the essential distinction between alcohol and potable spirit ; and according as the foreign constituent differs as to nature, so will the resulting spirit be brandy, gin, rum, &c. Guided by this principle, the chemist has it in his power to manufacture many potable spirits from alcohol, by the addition of the necessary flavour- ingagents.

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Since the failure of the vine crop, alcohol, the result of fermented malt, has been largely imported into France from England as a basis for the ma- nufacture of brandy ; and if the alcohol produced from the fermentation of malt could be absolutely deprived of its foreign odorous matters, which I believe it cannot, there is no reason wherefore brandy from this source should not be equal in quality to brandy drawn from fermented grapes. It so happens, then, that much of the brandy now imported from France is not similar to but identical with the brandy manufactured here and known as British.

" The distinction necessary to be drawn between pure spirit—understand- ing the word purity in its chemical sense—and palatable spirit, is well illus- trated by the operation of whisky manufacture. Some tune since, a most elaborate and a very beautiful method of distillation was discovered by an engineer named Coffey. The apparatus was adopted by some Irish manu- facturers of whisky. I saw it in operation at Cork in the year 1848, and was delighted with it. Since that period, however, the Coffey apparatus has been abandoned by the greater number of whisky-manufacturers, be- cause, to use their expression, it destroyed the flavour of the spirit ; butt in the arid language of chemistry, because it yielded a spirit too pure—in a chemical sense, too nearly approaching the condition of alcohol or alcohol and water—to suit the public taste. Whisky, in point of fact, is alcohol plus certain odorous foreign matters. What the whole of the flavouring agents may be which confer on whisky its peculiar odour and taste, is not known."—Scoffern on Food Adulterations.

The tendency to deviate from an exact standard of purity seems a natural law. Cousin tells us there is no perfect circle in nature : there is certainly no such thing as pure water ; and when the che- mist has produced it by distillation, it is neither palatable nor wholesome. The connoisseur of port wine, who gives his four or five guineas a dozen, cannot get it pure. All ports designed for this country are adulterated with brandy ; without it they would not sell. If he went to Portugal, he would probably get a mixed wine ; if not of several wines, at least of mixed grapes. Contrary to the general opinion, it would seem that the cheaper ports are really wines, though you get a glass of " mixture " ; but perhaps this remark can scarcely apply to the " fine old port " at half-a- crown a bottle.

" There are many recipes for preparing port wine : thus, Mr. Bedding stated, in his evidence before the Wine-duties Committee, that the follow- ing is a mode of making surreptitious port in London- 230 gallons of Beni Carlos, 230 „ Figueiras, 137 „ Cape, 165 „ Good Port, 115 „ Common Port, 20 „ Mountain,

26 „ Brandy-casks washings, colouring liquid, ea." —Mareet on the Composition of Food.

We have heard a good deal about the adulteration of sugar. Mr. Scoffern, whose experience in sugar-manufacture is very great, distinctly denies the charge so far as regards white or lump sugar, and doubts it as to moist.

"I have witnessed every process of sugar extraction, both from the cane- j nice and from the beet-root ; I have also spent much time in many ordinary refineries: any processes, therefore, of sugar adulteration practised by the manufacturer I must necessarily have seen. I am able to aver that none such exist, if the case of the colonial manufacturer be excepted, who does not allow so much molasses to drain away as he might, simply because the Legislature does not encourage him to export a very pure material. • * *

"Dr. Hassall and other microscopic observers recommend the abolition of coloured sugar, and the consumption of white or refined sugar ex- clusively. Even supposing this idea could be carried out, there are many persons who would prefer coloured sugar, and who would continue to partake of it notwithstanding the presence of the little acari. Indeed, it would go very hard with us if We should be debarred from eating and drinking every- thing which might contain animalcules. Nevertheless the sugar acari are very ugly little beings ; and if we needs must eat them, less we know of it the better.

" Lump or refined sugar cannot well be adulterated, either by the manu- facturer or grocer, and a similar remark applies to crushed lump ; but yellow or moist sugars are very rarely sold as imported. The grocer manufactures an article on which he can realize a given price, by mixing together either two or more colonial sugars, or colonial sugar with the coloured product of refineries. Here I believe the adulteration stops. It may have been the practice at one time to add to cane-sugar a certain mixture of grape-sugar or glucose—not obtained from grapes, but generated artificially by boiling potato-starch with dilute oil of vitriol. This practice has long ceased, for the very sufficient reason that it ceased to be remunerative when the potato crop began to fail. As regards the sand and sawdust, which grocers are reported to mix with their sugar, I believe they have no better foundation than a popular preju- diee."—Begifern on Food Adulterations.

Treacle and molasses would seem to be genuine articles, in the sense of not being .intentionally adulterated by the dealers ; yet two filthier substances it is difficult to conceive.

"Treacle and Molasses.—These terms are generally held to be convertible ; nevertheless, they have a different significance, molasses being the saccha- rine liquid drainage of moist sugar in the colonies, and treacle being the eorresnding refuse of home refineries. Both treacle and molasses being refuse of sugar—being, in short, an aggregate of all those substances generated out of sugar by the application of heat, and which cannot be crys- tallized—the composition of either necessarily varies. Inasmuch as bullock? blood, frequently putrid, is employed in the refining operation, whereas no such animal admixture is used in the colonies, molasses should seem to be the less disgusting material of the two. I doubt, .however, whether it merits this preeminence. The molasses-reservoirs in the colonies are haunted by a host of rats, cockroaches, flies, centipedes, and other creatures which swarm under a Tropical sun. They enter, surfeit themselves, and die ; thus, perhaps, contributing to the nutriment of molasses, but assuredly at the expense of sentiment and of delicacy. As regards treacle,. the sugar- refiner will aver that no blood or derivative of blood can possibly find its way into that product,. seeing, as he argues, that the process of charcoal filtration must necessarily separate it. Generally, I admit, the colouring matter of the blood is separated by charcoal filtration ; not always, however : its odorous matter is never altogether separated by that or any other refinery process, but ultimately finds its way into the treacle. There is no subject on which the susceptibilities of sugar-refiners are more delicate than that of bullocks' blood. Firstly, not liking to use the name, they technically call it spice. Many refiners, playing with the latter word, protest they do not use blood ; and if hardly pressed, they will only own to an exceptional em- ployment of it. " The export refiners have experienced considerable difficulty in relation to this blood question amongst the subjects of the Emperor of Morocco and other good Mussulmans. As regards the Turks, so civilized are they, that give them sugar white enough, it may have been fined by swine's blood, so little do they care : less civilized followers of the Prophet, however, set more store on his precepts. With them, fond as they are of white sugar, it is a great point that no blood shall have been used in its elaboration. Of this they are duly assured by little Arabic placards attached to the sugar- loaves : the evidence is satisfactory and the sugar sells."—Scoffern on Food Adulterations.

Whether exceptions were formerly exaggerated into rules, or our trading morality is improved, or the analytical chemist is too much abroad with " detection made easy," we infer there is really less adulteration than there was, or than there is asserted to be. Mr. Seoffern gives an instance of almost princely outlay in efforts to avoid even a tinge of copper. " Pickles and Preserves.—Both these varieties of food are frequently con- taminated; certain impurities being purposely added, whilst the presence of others is attributable to accident. Foremost in importance are the poison- ous adulterations, and they chiefly refer to the admixture of copper. It unfortunately so happens that copper is the only available metal for the purposes of manufacturing vessels of capacity.suitable for the pialemaker and wholesale confectioner. Iron vessels are inadmissible on account of the facility with which that metal dissolves, and the disagreeable colour it im- parts. Iron vessels, lined with porcelain, answer well enough for small quantities, and at first. Vessels of this material, however, cannot be pro- cured beyond very moderate dimensions ; not only so, but the internal porcelain glaze in process of time cracks, and fails to be any longer a pro- tection. Vessels of copper-tinned and copper-silvered are open to a similar objection, the protective coating wearing away after a time. Some of our large manufacturers of pickles and preserves have actually gone to the ex- pense of providing themselves with silver vessels; but, notwithstanding the expense incurred, the material has not justified the expectations which were entertained respecting it. Every one must have noticed the facility with which articles of silver become black when exposed to the air under certain conditions, especially the air of cities : this blackening is attributable to the formation of a sulphuret, which is an objection to the use of silver ves- sels for the purposes indicated. A platinum vessel would of course be free from every objection, though the expense of first purchase would be great. Nevertheless, I wonder much that some of our enterprising pickle and pre- serve manufacturers have not incurred this expense. Taking advantage of the popular desire for non-adulterated pickles and preserves, I should think the purchase of a platinum vessel would be amply compensated. After all, the weight of platinum would be less than that required and commonly used by manufacturers of oil of vitriol. So long as oil of vitriol continued to be distilled from glass retorts, the liquid remained dear ; it is only since the precious metal platinum has been substituted for glass that oil of vitriol has been procurable at its present moderate rate."—Scofern on Food Adul- terations.

The facts on which this notice has been chiefly based have been drawn from Dr. Marcet's treatise On the Composition of Food

and How it is Adulterated, and Mr. Scoffern's essay on "Food Adulterations," appended to the translation of Professor Mole- schott's Chemistry of Food, published in " Orr's Circle of the Sciences." The object of Mr. Scoffern's essay is to present a po- pular summary of the different ways in which the leading articles of food, including liquids, are adulterated, as well as to point out the simpler means of detection. This task he has ef- fected with the ease and skill of a practised writer added to the knowledge of a chemist who has been practically engaged upon the matters on which he treats. With some few exceptions, re- lating rather to chemical accidents than to regular adulteration, there is throughout an absence of exaggeration, with the moderate tone that actual knowledge generally induces. Mr. Scoffern has also some suggestions for improving the law upon the subject ; the basis of which, he truly says, should be a definition of what con- stitutes adulteration. In practice, this would be attended with difficulty in many cases, because the articles are in themselves factitious; the purchaser must know it. For example, cham-

pagne is avertised, and by the same houses, at from 42s. to 84s. per dozen. The British public is very gullible, but it seems diffi-

cult to suppose that any man can fancy he could get a four-guinea article for two guineas. Beyond forbidding the use of certain things of a deleterious nature, it does not not strike us that legis- lation can do much. Improvement must be left to the growth of a higher trading morality and a sharper look-out on the part of the public ; both which points seem to be already operating. As long as people persist in striving to get commodities for less than their cost, they will be supplied with adulterated goods.

Dr. Marcet's volume On the Composition of Food is a more pro- fessional work than Mr. Scoffern's. It exhibits the chemical pro- perties of the articles used for food, beginning with flour ; it de- scribes the various modes that are and have been made use of for adulterating them; it explains the best methods of detecting the adulteration, from the simpler process which leads to a rough inference, up to the refined analytical demonstration that only an accomplished chemist can attempt. Although apparently de- signed for students or amateur chemists, it contains a good deal of popular matter descriptive of the processes of genuine manufac- ture, or of the modes of adulteration. Dr. Marcet seems inclined to think there is more adulteration going on than Mr. Scoffern concludes to be the case : but it may be that he draws more from theoretical writers, and seems to convey his own opinions when he is only describing theirs. In both writers there is an absence of the gross exaggeration frequently met with.