POISONING OF FOOD.
A Treatise on Adulterations of Food,
AND CULINARY POISONS;
Exhibiting the Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine,
Spirituous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cheese, Pepper, Mustard, &c. &c.
And methods of detecting them.
By FREDRICK ACCUM.
(From the Literary Gazette, No. CLVI. 1820.)
One has laughed at the whimsical description of the cheats in Humphrey Clinker, but it is really impossible to laugh at Mr. Accum’s exposition. It is too serious for a joke to see that in almost every thing which we eat or drink, we are condemned to swallow swindling, if not poison—that all the items of metropolitan, and many of country consumption, are deteriorated, deprived of nutritious properties, or rendered obnoxious to humanity by the vile arts and merciless sophistications of their sellers. So general seems the corruption, and so fatal the tendency of most of the corrupting materials, that we can no longer wonder at the prevalence of painful disorders, and the briefness of existence (on an average) in spite of the great increase of medical knowledge, and the amazing improvement in the healing science, which distinguish our era. No skill can prevent the effects of daily poisoning; and no man can prolong his life beyond a short standard, where every meal ought to have its counteracting medicine.