A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons / Exhibiting the Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine, Spiritous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionery, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, Olive Oil, Pickles, and Other Articles Employed in Domestic Economy

by Friedrich Christian Accum

Other individuals furnish the baker with alum mixed up with salt, under the obscure denomination of stuff. There are wholesale manufacturing chemists, whose sole business is to crystallise alum, in such a form as will adapt this salt to the purpose of being mixed in a crystalline state with the crystals of common salt, to disguise the character of the compound. The mixture called stuff, is composed of one part of alum, in minute crystals, and three of common salt. In many other trades a similar mode of proceeding prevails. Potatoes are soaked in water to augment their weight.

The practice of sophisticating the necessaries of life, being reduced to systematic regularity, is ranked by public opinion among other mercantile pursuits; and is not only regarded with less disgust than formerly, but is almost generally esteemed as a justifiable way to wealth.

It is really astonishing that the penal law is not more effectually enforced against practices so inimical to the public welfare. The man who robs a fellow subject of a few shillings on the high-way, is sentenced to death; while he who distributes a slow poison to a whole community, escapes unpunished.

It has been urged by some, that, under so vast a system of finance as that of Great Britain, it is expedient that the revenue should be collected in large amounts; and therefore that the severity of the law should be relaxed in favour of all mercantile concerns in proportion to their extent: encouragement must be given to large capitalists; and where an extensive brewery or distillery yields an important contribution to the revenue, no strict scrutiny need be adopted in regard to the quality of the article from which such contribution is raised, provided the excise do not suffer by the fraud.

But the principles of the constitution afford no sanction to this preference, and the true interests of the country require that it should be abolished; for a tax dependent upon deception must be at best precarious, and must be, sooner or later, diminished by the irresistible diffusion of knowledge. Sound policy requires that the law should be impartially enforced in all cases; and if its penalties were extended to abuses of which it does not now take cognisance, there is no doubt that the revenue would be abundantly benefited.

Another species of fraud, to which I shall at present but briefly advert, and which has increased to so alarming an extent, that it loudly calls for the interference of government, is the adulteration of drugs and medicines.

Nine-tenths of the most potent drugs and chemical preparations used in pharmacy, are vended in a sophisticated state by dealers who would be the last to be suspected. It is well known, that of the article Peruvian bark, there is a variety of species inferior to the genuine; that too little discrimination is exercised by the collectors of this precious medicament; that it is carelessly assorted, and is frequently packed in green hides; that much of it arrives in Spain in a half-decayed state, mixed with fragments of other vegetables and various extraneous substances; and in this state is distributed throughout Europe.

But as if this were not a sufficient deterioration, the public are often served with a spurious compound of mahogany saw-dust and oak wood, ground into powder mixed with a proportion of good quinquina, and sold as genuine bark powder.

Every chemist knows that there are mills constantly at work in this metropolis, which furnish bark powder at a much cheaper rate than the substance can be procured for in its natural state. The price of the best genuine bark, upon an average, is not lower than twelve shillings the pound; but immense quantities of powder bark are supplied to the apothecaries at three or four shillings a pound.

It is also notorious that there are manufacturers of spurious rhubarb powder, ipecacuanha powder,[2] James's powder; and other simple and compound medicines of great potency, who carry on their diabolical trade on an amazingly large scale. Indeed, the quantity of medical preparations thus sophisticated exceeds belief. Cheapness, and not genuineness and excellence, is the grand desideratum with the unprincipled dealers in drugs and medicines.