The circumstances comprehended under this head certainly deserve to be
ranked amongst the more powerful causes, which have operated in
affecting the reputation of many medicinal substances. The Peruvian Bark
fell into total discredit in the year 1779, from its inability to cure
the ague; and it was afterwards discovered to have been adulterated with
bark of an inferior species; indeed Sydenham speaks of the adulteration
of this substance before the year 1678; he tells us that he had never
used to exceed two drachms of _Cinchona_ in the cure of any
intermittent, but that of late the drug was so inert, rotten, and
adulterated, it became necessary to increase its dose to one, two, or
three ounces. The subject is copious and full of importance, and I have
taken considerable pains to collect very fully, the various modes in
which our remedies are thus deprived of their most valuable properties,
and to suggest the best tests by which such frauds may be discovered.
Very few practitioners have an idea of the alarming extent to which this
nefarious practice is carried, or of the systematic manner in which it
is conducted: there can be no doubt but that the sophistication of
medicines has been practised in degree in all ages,[122] but the
refinements of chemistry have enabled the manufacturers of the present
day, not only to execute these frauds with greater address, but
unfortunately, at the same time, to vend them with less chance of
detection. It will be scarcely credited, when I affirm that many hundred
persons are supported in this metropolis by the art of adulterating
drugs, besides a number of women and children who find ample employment
and excellent profit in _counterfeiting_ Cochineal with coloured dough,
Isinglass with pieces of bladder and the dried skin of soles, and by
filling up with powdered Sassafras the holes which are bored in spice
and nutmegs, for the purpose of plundering their essential oils.