A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons | Page 4

not appear to be aware that mustard
seed alone cannot produce, when ground, a powder of so intense and
brilliant a colour as that of the common mustard of commerce. Nor
would the powder of real mustard, when mixed with salt and water,

without the addition of a portion of pulverised capsicum, keep for so
long a time as the mustard usually offered for sale.
Many other instances of unconscious deceptions might be mentioned,
which were practised by persons of upright and honourable minds.
It is a painful reflection, that the division of labour which has been so
instrumental in bringing the manufactures of this country to their
present flourishing state, should have also tended to conceal and
facilitate the fraudulent practices in question; and that from a
correspondent ramification of commerce into a multitude of distinct
branches, particularly in the metropolis and the large towns of the
empire, the traffic in adulterated commodities should find its way
through so many circuitous channels, as to defy the most scrutinising
endeavour to trace it to its source.
It is not less lamentable that the extensive application of chemistry to
the useful purposes of life, should have been perverted into an auxiliary
to this nefarious traffic. But, happily for the science, it may, without
difficulty, be converted into a means of detecting the abuse; to effect
which, very little chemical skill is required; and the course to be
pursued forms the object of the following pages.
The baker asserts that he does not put alum into bread; but he is well
aware that, in purchasing a certain quantity of flour, he must take a sack
of sharp whites (a term given to flour contaminated with a quantity of
alum), without which it would be impossible for him to produce light,
white, and porous bread, from a half-spoiled material.
The wholesale mealman frequently purchases this spurious commodity,
(which forms a separate branch of business in the hands of certain
individuals,) in order to enable himself to sell his decayed and
half-spoiled flour.
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