ADULTERATION
—is the too prevalent custom of lowering the strength of spirits by the profitable addition of water, thereby reducing the quality by increasing the quantity; or, in words of less paradoxical import, by a most deceptive prostitution of integrity on one side, and an equally shameful imposition upon friendly confidence on the other. This species of lawless tergiversation, bad as it is, cannot be considered so truly unprincipled, so strictly iniquitous, or so cruelly destructive, as the adulteration of medicine: this has been for a long time past the purest privilege of the profession, and may be candidly concluded the most predominant and best-founded reason that can be assigned for the unprecedented increase of CHEMISTS and DRUGGISTS in every part of the kingdom. The superior art of adulteration consists (with the adept) in so securely incorporating the cheap and inferior substitute with the genuine and higher priced article of the Materia Medica, as to insure the additional profit, and (secundum artem) escape detection. To this purity of principle, this species of professional privilege, it is, that individuals of opulence and liberality stand indebted for the disappointments they have experienced in the expected efficacy of "prescriptions faithfully prepared."