The water distilled from cherry laurel leaves is frequently mixed with brandy and other spiritous liquors, to impart to them the flavour of the cordial called noyeau, (see also page [195].)
This fluid, though long in frequent use as a flavouring substance, was not known to be poisonous until the year 1728; when the sudden death of two women, in Dublin, after drinking some of the common distilled cherry laurel water, demonstrated its deleterious nature.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] Literary Chronicle, No. 22, p. 348.—1819.
Poisonous Anchovy Sauce.
Several samples which we have examined of this fish sauce have been found contaminated with lead.
The mode of preparation of this fish sauce, consists in rubbing down the broken anchovy in a mortar: and this triturated mass, being of a dark brown colour, receives, without much risk of detection, a certain quantity of Venetian red, added for the purpose of colouring it, which, if genuine, is an innocent colouring substance; but instances have occurred of this pigment having been adulterated with orange lead, which is nothing else than a better kind of minium, or red oxide of lead. The fraud may be detected, as stated p. [229].
The conscientious oilmen, less anxious with respect to colour, substitute for this poison the more harmless pigment, called Armenian bole.