Lead, again, has been found by the analyst in most of the ordinary foods, such as flour, bread, beer, cider, wines, spirits, tea, vinegar, sugar, confectionery, &c., as well as in numerous drugs, especially those manufactured by the aid of sulphuric acid (the latter nearly always containing lead), and those salts or chemical products which (like citric and tartaric acids) are crystallised in leaden pans. Hence it follows that in almost everything eaten or drunk the analyst, as a matter of routine, tests for lead. The channels through which it may enter into the system are, however, so perfectly familiar to practical chemists, that a few unusual instances of lead-poisoning only need be quoted here.
A cabman suffered from lead colic, traced to his taking the first glass of beer every morning at a certain public-house; the beer standing in the pipes all night, as proved by analysis, was strongly impregnated with lead.[827]
[827] Chem. News.
The employment of red lead for repairing the joints of steam pipes has before now caused poisonous symptoms from volatilisation of lead.[828] The use of old painted wood in a baker’s oven, and subsequent adherence of the oxide of lead to the outside of the loaves, has caused the illness of sixty-six people.[829]
[828] Eulenberg, Op. cit., p. 708.
[829] Annales d’Hygiène.