Castor-oil, when good, is of a light amber or straw colour, inclining to a greenish cast. That which has the least smell, taste, and colour, is considered the mildest. The necessity of some attention to these signs may appear, when I state that I once took seven ounces of this oil in successive doses, and do verily believe that I might have continued to this present hour taking, daily, the usual dose furnished from the same quarter, with as little effect, had not my good genius directed me to send for an ounce from Apothecaries’ Hall. I recommend my readers to purchase their drugs, &c. in the same place.
Ipecacuanha.—As this drug is sold to the public in a pulverized state, there is no short or off-hand test for discovering its purity. It is adulterated with emetic tartar.
Opium.—Good opium in a concrete state should be of a blackish brown colour, of a strong fetid smell, a hard viscous texture, and heavy; and when rubbed between the finger and thumb, it is perfectly free from roughness or grittiness. This drug is liable to great adulteration, being frequently vitiated with cow-dung, or a powder composed of the dry leaves and stalks of the poppy, the gum of the mimosa, meal and other substances. The flavour alone indicates the goodness of opium in a liquid state.
Rhubarb.—The marks of the goodness of rhubarb are the liveliness of its colour when cut; its being firm, dry, and solid, but not flinty or hard; its being easily pulverizable, and appearing, when powdered, of a fine bright yellow colour; and its imparting to the spittle, when chewed, a deep saffron-colour, and not proving slimy or mucilaginous to the taste. When rhubarb has become worm-eaten, druggist-ingenuity is called into play, by filling up the holes with a paste made of rhubarb-powder and mucilage; and then the physic-artists roll the mended pieces in the finest rhubarb powder to give their handy works a good colour and an appearance of freshness.
Senna leaves are frequently mixed and sophisticated with leaves of argol, box leaves, &c.
But among the frauds and impositions practised on the public, none are more odious and unprincipled, and, at the same time, more loudly call for the prompt and active interference of the Legislature, than the tricks and effrontery of impostors, quacks, and empirics in medicine, both regular and irregular. It cannot but have been the frequent subject of regret to every honest and reflecting person that this vile trade should receive a legal sanction and protection, which it most assuredly does by virtue of the stamp duty imposed on the villainous trash; and it cannot be sufficiently deplored that any government should find itself reduced to straits so deplorable, or be so short-sighted in its views of enlightened policy, as to be under the necessity of extracting a paltry and disgraceful profit to the revenue of the state, from the tolerance and encouragement of ignorance, imposture, and mischief.
The assertion is true, that those pests of society the charlatans and nostrum-mongers “quarter” themselves only on the ignorance and credulity of mankind, and that their patrons and supporters are wealthy but ignorant men, and superstitious old women, or profligate and thoughtless rakes; but this is a miserable excuse, and but lame kind of reasoning: if it means any thing, it proves the necessity of public protection from the abominable and anti-christian nuisance. Can there be greater libel on the utility and operation of English law, than that vermin of the description of the “Balsam of Rackasiri” empirics[M] should be tolerated and allowed to spread their mischief and destruction among the population of a country professing Christianity and civilization, and forsooth, to boast of “the thousands they pay yearly to the government and the public press,” in the form of duty to the one for its sanction and licence, and to the other in the form of remuneration for giving a disgraceful and destructive publicity to their nefarious designs.[N]
Nor is the absence of a proper discrimination between right and wrong of a certain prating brazen-faced
“barrister” less reprehensible. I love and venerate “the Bar;” but I must be free to say that when a man can be found so devoid of just and proper feeling as to appear, for the paltry remuneration of a few pounds, or for any remuneration however large, in the defence and propagation of naked and disgusting fraud and peculation—aye, and the secret and wide-spreading destruction of health and life too!—it evidently proves that there are some members of that distinguished profession who are not possessed of the high and honourable feelings which belong to those who are gentlemen by birth and breeding, scholars by education, and Christians and honourable men from moral and religious feeling. But it is to be hoped that there will never occur again a similar exhibition to that which took place at Marlborough-street on the infamous Rackasiri-balsam fraud, practised on Miss May, by “the learned graduates of Petticoat-lane,” and “regularly bred physicians,” the Jew pedlars and old clothesmen “of wonderful abilities,” the “Doctors” C. and J. Jordan; who “feel awkwardness in recommending to public notice their uncommon discoveries and talents.” The more I consider that transaction, the more I am satisfied that the magistrates are to blame for having allowed the piece of impudent effrontery and imposture to have had the semblance of their sanction, by their singular taciturnity which happened on that occasion. Of the newspapers which gave currency and circulation to the artful and fiend-like exculpation, language will not afford terms strong enough to express one’s abhorrence and indignation. O shame! where is thy blush? How much human misery and destruction has the insertion of those disgraceful and wicked puffs occasioned, by inducing the weak and credulous to give credit to that as a piece of intelligence coming from editors of accredited and impartial journals, which is merely the contrivance and fabrication of wicked impostors to delude and ensnare the thoughtless and unsuspecting; and for the giving of its mischievous publicity, the proprietors and editors of certain newspapers received large sums of money. But let those thoughtless men reflect, that it is the very consummation of cruelty and unprincipled conduct to sanction the infamous tampering with the lives and happiness of one’s fellow creatures for the mere sake of lucre. Nor is the conduct of the magistrates of certain police offices (particularly those to whom the jurisdiction of the city of London is entrusted) less reprehensible, and less fraught with mischievous consequences. What! ought the frauds and murderous designs of the basest miscreants alive to receive the solemn and imposing sanction and authority of an oath made before a judicial tribunal? Surely a grosser violation of duty and a more stupid and reckless indifference to the destruction of human health and life, were never, in the most barbarous country, and the most uncivilized age, exhibited, than the want of sense and foresight displayed by some city-magistrates in allowing affidavits to be made before them of the “wonderful cures” performed on the deluded and perjured agents and “stalking horses” of the empirics and impostors; but, fortunately for mankind, the culpable act will ever remain on record as a stigma and reproach of city-legislation and moral economy. The trade of legalized poisoning and destruction of public health has received greater and more effectual help and recommendation from that source than from all the arts and devices of the impostors, though aided by the sanction of a government duty, and the disgusting and unprincipled puffs and paragraphs of a certain portion of the public press. To put an end to these culpable and mischievous proceedings, either on the part of magistrates or of editors of newspapers, in future, I wish those gentlemen to bear in mind that their “misdoings” shall entitle them to a “niche and an escutcheon of immortality” in the pages of “Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked;”
“If there’s a hole in a’ your coats,