comparatively harmless, whilst others are affected by substances
deleterious to health.” (P. 185.)
We think, however, that the candour of Mr. Accum leads him to
make too much allowance for this consideration throughout.
Surely, though many articles of food be not absolutely
poisonous, a diet consisting of drugs and chemical compounds and
articles never intended by nature to be eaten or drunk, articles
for which, presented simple, the hungriest stomach would feel no
appetite or inclination, cannot be wholesome. Brick and mortar
are not poison; yet we cannot, like the dragon of Wantley,
swallow a church, and pick our teeth with the steeple. Many can
eat oysters, but few could manage the oyster-knife. Even the
Welshman of King Arthur’s court, fond as he was of toasted
cheese, would inevitably have been choked by the mouse that ran
down his throat to eat it, had he not “pulled him out by the
tail.”
We could give farther extracts; but must refer the reader to the work
itself, which contains much interesting matter, besides what we have
selected. THE MONEY THAT IS OFTEN LAID OUT IN THE PURCHASE OF COOKERY
BOOKS, WHICH TEACH THE ART OF EXCITING DISEASE AND PAIN BY DUBIOUS
COMBINATIONS AND CULINARY POISONS, MIGHT, WE THINK, BE MUCH BETTER
EXPENDED UPON A BOOK LIKE THE PRESENT; EVERY PAGE OF WHICH GIVES WARNING
OF SOME DANGER, OF WHICH WE OUGHT ALL TO BE AWARE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A
Treatise on Adulterated Provisions.
BY FREDRICK ACCUM.
-------
THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT.
II. KINGS—CHAP. VI. VERSE XI.
(_From Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, No. XXXV. Page 542._)
Mr. Accum, it appears, is one of those very good-natured friends, who is
quite resolved not to allow us to be cheated and poisoned as our fathers
were before us, and our children will be after us, without cackling to
us of our danger, and opening our eyes to abysses of fraud and
imposition, of the very existence of which we had until now the good
fortune to be entirely ignorant. His book is a perfect death’s head, a
memento mori, the perusal of any single chapter of which is enough to
throw any man into the blue devils for a fortnight. Mr. Accum puts us
something in mind of an officious blockhead, who, instead of comforting
his dying friend, is continually jogging him on the elbow with such
cheering assurances as the following. “I am sorry there is no hope; my
dear fellow, you must kick the bucket soon. Your liver is diseased, your
lungs gone, your bowels as impenetrable as marble, your legs swelled
like door-posts, your face as yellow as a guinea, and the doctor just
now assured me you could not live a week.”
Mr. Accum’s work is evidently written in the same spirit of dark and
melancholy anticipation, which pervades Dr. Robison’s celebrated “Proofs
of a Conspiracy, &c. against all the crowned heads of Europe.” The
conspiracy disclosed by Mr. Accum is certainly of a still more dreadful
nature, and is even more widely ramified than that which excited so much
horror in the worthy professor. It is a conspiracy of brewers, bakers,
grocers, wine-merchants, confectioners, apothecaries, and cooks, against
the lives of all and every one of his majesty’s liege subjects. It is
easy to see that Mr. Accum’s nerves are considerably agitated, that—
“Sad forebodings shake him as he writes.”
Not only at the festive board is he haunted by chimeras dire of
danger—not only does he tremble over the tureen—and faint over the
flesh-pot: but even in his chintz night-gown, and red morocco slippers,
he is not secure. An imaginary sexton is continually jogging his elbow
as he writes, a death’s head and cross bones rise on his library table;
and at the end of his sofa he beholds a visionary tomb-stone of the best
granite—
ON WHICH ARE INSCRIBED THE DREADFUL WORDS—
[Illustration:
_Hic Jacet_,
FREDRICK ACCUM,
Operative Chemist,
OLD COMPTON STREET,
_SOHO_.
]
Since we read his book, our appetite has visibly decreased. At the
Celtic club, yesterday, we dined almost entirely on roast beef; Mr.
Oman’s London-particular Madeira lost all its relish, and we turned pale
in the act of eating a custard, when we recollected the dreadful
punishment inflicted on custard-eaters, in page 326 of the present work.
We beg to assure our friends, therefore, that at the present moment they
may invite us to dinner with the greatest impunity.—Our diet is at
present quite similar to that of Parnel’s hermit,
“Our food the fruits, our drink the crystal well;”
though we trust a few days will recover us from our panic, and enable us
to resume our former habits of life. Those of our friends, therefore,
who have any intention of pasturing us, had better not lose the present
opportunity of doing so. So favourable a combination of circumstances
must have been quite unhoped for on their part, and most probably will
never occur again.[24] V. S.
Footnote 24:
To save some trouble, we may announce that we are already engaged to
dinner, on the 23d, 27th, and 28th of this month, and to evening
parties, on the 22d, 23d, 26th, 28th, and 29th, and 3d of March.
Since, by the publication of Mr. Accum’s book, an end has been for ever
put to our former blessed state of ignorance, let us arm ourselves with
philosophy, and boldly venture to look our danger in the face; or, as
the poet beautifully expresses it, in language singularly applicable,
“Come, Christopher, and leave all meaner things,
To low ambition and the pride of kings;
Let us, since life can little else supply;
Than just to swallow poison and to die;
Expatiate free o’er all this dreadful field,
Try what the brewer, what the baker yield;
Explore the druggists’ shop, the butchers’ stall;
Expose their roguery, and—damn them all!”
POPE.
Melancholy as the details are, there is something almost ludicrous, we
think, in the very extent to which the deceptions are carried. So
inextricably are we all immersed in this mighty labyrinth of fraud, that
even the venders of poison themselves are forced, by a sort of
retributive justice, to swallow it in their turn.—Thus the apothecary,
who sells the poisonous ingredients to the brewer, chuckles over his
roguery, and swallows his own drugs in his daily copious exhibitions of
Brown stout. The brewer in his turn, is poisoned by the baker, the
wine-merchant, and the grocer. And, whenever the baker’s stomach fails
him, he meets his _coup de grace_ in the adulterated drugs of his friend
the apothecary, whose health he has been gradually contributing to
undermine, by feeding him every morning on chalk and alum, in the shape
of hot rolls.
Our readers will now, we think, be able to form a general idea of the
perils to which they are exposed by every meal.
Mr. Accum’s details on the adulteration of wine are extremely ample, and
so interesting, that we regret our limits prevent our making more
copious extracts, and oblige us to refer our readers for farther
information to the work itself.
Having thus laid open to our view the arcana of the cellar, Mr. Accum
next treats us with an expose of the secrets of the brew-house. Verily,
the wine-merchant and brewer are _par nobile fratrum_; and after the
following disclosures, it will henceforth be a matter of the greatest
indifference to us, whether we drink Perry or Champaigne, Hermitage or
Brown stout. _Latet anguis in poculo_, there is disease and death in
them all, and one is only preferable to the other, because it will
poison us at about one-tenth of the expense.
“Malt liquors, and particularly porter, the favourite beverage
of the inhabitants of London and of other large towns, is
amongst those articles, in the manufacture of which the greatest
frauds are frequently committed.
“The practice of adulterating beer appears to be of early date.
To shew that they have augmented in our own days, we shall
exhibit an abstract from documents laid lately before
Parliament.
“Mr. Accum not only amply proves, that unwholesome ingredients
are used by fraudulent brewers, and that very deleterious
substances are also vended both to brewers and publicans for
adulterating beer, but that the ingredients mixed up in the
brewer’s enchanting cauldron are placed above all competition,
even with the potent charms of Macbeth’s witches:
‘Root of hemlock, digg’d i’ the dark,
* * * *
* * * *
For a charm of pow’rful trouble.
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble;
Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.’
Mr. Accum very properly gives us a list of those miscreants who have
been convicted of adulterating their porter with poisonous ingredients,
and want of room alone prevents us from damning them to everlasting
fame, by inserting their names along with that of the Rev. Sennacherib
Terrot, in the imperishable pages of this miscellany.
Mr. Accum gives us a long dissertation on counterfeit tea, and another
on spurious coffee; but as these are impositions by which we are little
affected, we shall not allow them to detain us. The leaves of the
sloe-thorn are substituted for the former, and roasted horse beans for
the latter. These frauds, it appears, are carried to a very great
extent.
We must now draw our extracts to a close; but we can assure our readers,
that we have not yet introduced them to one tythe of the poisonous
articles in common use, detected by Mr. Accum. We shall give the titles
of a few to satisfy the curious:—Poisonous confectionary, poisonous
pickles, poisonous cayenne pepper, poisonous custards, poisonous anchovy
sauce, poisonous lozenges, poisonous lemon acid, poisonous mushrooms,
poisonous ketchup, and poisonous soda water! Read this, and wonder how
you live!
While we thus suffer under accumulated miseries brought upon us by the
unprincipled avarice and cupidity of others, it is surely incumbent on
us not wantonly to increase the catalogue by any negligence or follies
of our own. Will it be believed, that in the cookery book, which forms
the prevailing oracle of the kitchens in this part of the island, there
is an express injunction to “_boil greens with halfpence_ in order to
improve their _colour_?”—That our puddings are frequently seasoned with
laurel leaves, and our sweetmeats almost uniformly prepared in copper
vessels? Why are we thus compelled to swallow a supererogatorary
quantity of poison which may so easily be avoided? And why are we
constantly made to run the risk of our lives by participating in
custards, trifles, and blancmanges, seasoned by a most deadly poison
extracted from the _prunus lauro-cerasus_? Verily, while our present
detestable system of cookery remains, we may exclaim with the sacred
historian, that there is indeed “Death in the Pot.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Treatise on Adulterations of Food,
AND CULINARY POISONS,
Exhibiting the Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine,
Spirituous Liquors, &c. and Methods of detecting them.
BY FREDRICK ACCUM.
(_From the Edinburgh Review, No. LXV. Page 131._)
It is curious to see how vice varies its forms, and maintains its
substance, in all conditions of society;—and how certainly those
changes, or improvements as we call them, which diminish one class of
offences, aggravate or give birth to another.—In rude and simple
communities, most crimes take the shape of violence and outrage—in
polished and refined ones, of Fraud. Men sin from their animal
propensities in the first case, and from their intellectual depravation
in the second. The one state of things is prolific of murders,
batteries, rapines, and burnings—the other of forgeries, swindlings,
defamations, and seductions. The sum of evil is probably pretty much the
same in both—though probably greatest in the civilized and enlightened
stages; the sharpening of the intellect, and the spread of knowledge,
giving prodigious force and activity to all criminal propensities.
Among the offences which are peculiar to a refined and enlightened
society, and owe their birth, indeed, to its science and refinement, are
those skilful and dexterous adulterations of the manifold objects of its
luxurious consumption, to which their value and variety, and the
delicacy of their preparation, hold out so many temptations; while the
very skill and knowledge which are requisite in their formation, furnish
such facilities for their sophistication. The very industry and busy
activity of such a society, exposes it more and more to such
impostures;—and by the division of labour which takes place, and
confines every man to his own separate task, brings him into a complete
dependence on the industry of others for a supply of the most necessary
articles.
The honesty of the dealer, and of the original manufacturer, is the only
security to the public for the genuineness of the article in which he
deals. The consumer can in general know nothing of their component
parts; he must take them as he finds them; and, even if he is
dissatisfied, he has in general no effectual means of redress.
It will be found, that as crimes of violence decrease with the progress
of society, frauds are multiplied; and there springs up in every
prosperous country a race of degenerate traders and manufacturers, whose
business is to cheat and to deceive; who pervert their talents to the
most dishonest purposes, prefering the illicit gains thus acquired to
the fair profits of honorable dealing; and counter-working, by their
sinister arts, the general improvement of society.
In almost every branch of manufacture, there are fraudulent dealers, who
are instigated by the thirst of gain, to debase the articles which they
vend to the public, and to exact a high price for what is comparatively
cheap and worthless. After pointing out various deceptions of this
nature, Mr. Accum, the ingenious author of the work before us, proceeds
in his account of those frauds, in the following terms.
‘Soap used in house-keeping is frequently adulterated with a
considerable portion of fine white clay, brought from St.
Stephen’s in Cornwall. In the manufacture of printing paper, a
large quantity of plaster of Paris is added to the paper stuff,
to increase the weight of the manufactured article. The selvage
of cloth is often dyed with a permanent colour, and artfully
stitched to the edge of cloth dyed with a fugitive dye. The
frauds committed in the tanning of skins, and in the manufacture
of cutlery, and jewellery, exceed belief.’ pp. 27-29.
What is infinitely worse, however, than any of those frauds,
sophistications, we are informed, are carried on to an equal extent in
all the essential articles of subsistence or comfort. So long as our
dishonest dealers do not intermeddle with these things, their deceptions
are comparatively harmless; the evil in all such cases amounting only to
so much pecuniary damage. But when they begin to tamper with food, or
with articles connected with the table, their frauds are most
pernicious: in all cases the nutritive quality of the food is injured,
by the artificial ingredients intermixed with it; and when these
ingredients, as frequently happens, are of a poisonous quality, they
endanger the health and even the life of all to whom they are vended. We
cannot conceive any thing more diabolical than those contrivances; and
we consider their authors in a far worse light than ordinary felons,
who, being known, can be duly guarded against. But those fraudulent
dealers conceal themselves under the fair show of a reputable
traffic—they contrive in this manner to escape the infamy which justly
belongs to them—and, under the disguise of wealth, credit, and
character, to lurk in the bosom of society, wounding the hand that
cherishes them, and scattering around them poison and death.
It is chiefly for the purpose of laying open the dishonest artifices of
this class of dealers, that Mr. Accum has published the present very
interesting and popular work; and he gives a most fearful view of the
various and extensive frauds which are daily practised on the
unsuspecting public.
‘Among the number of substances used in domestic economy,
which are now very generally found sophisticated, may be
distinguished—tea, coffee, bread, beer, wine, spirituous
liquors, salad oil, pepper, vinegar, mustard, cream, and other
articles of subsistence.—Indeed, it would be difficult to
mention a single article of food which is not to be met with
in an adulterated state; and there are some substances which
are scarcely ever to be procured genuine.—Some of these
spurious compounds are comparatively harmless when used as
food; and as, in these cases, merely substances of inferior
value are substituted for more costly and genuine ingredients,
the sophistication, though it may affect our purse, does not
injure our health. Of this kind are the manufacture of
factitious pepper, the adulterations of mustard, vinegar,
cream, &c. Others, however, are highly deleterious; and to
this class belong the adulterations of beer, wines, spirituous
liquors, pickles, salad oil, and many others.’ pp. 2-4.
There are, it appears, particular chemists who make it their sole
employment to supply the unprincipled brewer of porter and ale with
drugs, and other deleterious preparations; while others perform the same
office to the wine and spirit merchant, as well as to the grocer and
oilman—and these illicit pursuits have assumed all the order and method
of a regular trade.
‘The eager and insatiable thirst for gain’ (Mr. Accum justly
observes), which seems to be a leading characteristic of the
times, calls into action every human faculty, and gives an
irresistible impulse to the power of invention; and where lucre
becomes the reigning principle, the possible sacrifice of a
fellow-creature’s life is a secondary consideration.’
Mr. Accum having exhibited this general view of his subject, proceeds to
enter into an examination of the articles most commonly counterfeited,
and to explain the nature of the ingredients used in sophisticating
them. He commences with a dissertation on the qualities of good water,
in which he briefly points out the dangerous sophistications to which it
is liable, from the administration of foreign ingredients.
But in the case of water, the adulteration is purely accidental, which
cannot be said of the other articles specified by Mr. Accum. In the
making of Bread, more especially in London, various ingredients are
occasionally mingled with the dough. To suit the caprice of his
customers, the baker is obliged to have his bread light and porous, and
of a pure white. It is impossible to produce this sort of bread from
flour alone, unless it be of the finest quality. The best flour,
however, being mostly used by the biscuit-bakers and pastry-cooks, it is
only from the inferior sorts that bread is made; and it becomes
necessary, in order to have it of that light and porous quality, and of
a fine white, to mix alum with the dough. Without this ingredient, the
flour used by the London bakers would not yield so white a bread as that
sold in the metropolis.
Wine appears to be a subject for the most extensive and pernicious
frauds.
‘All persons (Mr. Accum observes) moderately conversant with the
subject, are aware, that a portion of alum is added to young and
meagre red wines, for the purpose of brightening their colour;
that Brazil wood, or the husks of elderberries and bilberries,
which are imported from Germany, under the fallacious name of
_berry-dye_, are employed to impart a deep rich purple tint to
red port of a pale colour; that gypsum is used to render cloudy
white wines transparent; that an additional astringency is
imparted to immature red wines by means of oak-wood and sawdust,
and the husks of filberts; and that a mixture of spoiled foreign
and home-made wines is converted into the wretched compound
frequently sold in the metropolis by the name _genuine old
Port_.’
Other expedients are resorted to, in order to give flavour to insipid
wines. For this purpose bitter almonds are occasionally employed;
factitious port wine is also flavoured with a tincture drawn from the
seeds of raisins; and other ingredients are frequently used, such as
sweet brier, orris root, clary, cherry-laurel water, and elder flowers.
In London, the sophistication of wine is carried to an enormous extent,
as well as the art of manufacturing spurious wine, which has become a
regular trade, in which a large capital is invested; and it is well
known that many thousand pipes of spoiled cider are annually sent to the
metropolis for the purpose of being converted into an imitation of port
wine.
Innumerable are the tricks practised to deceive the unwary, by giving to
weak, thin, and spoiled wines, all the characteristic marks of age, and
also of flavour and strength. In carrying on these illicit occupations,
the division of labour has been completely established; each has his own
task assigned him in the confederate work of iniquity; and thus they
acquire dexterity for the execution of their mischievous purposes. To
one class is allotted the task of _crusting_, which consists in lining
the interior surface of empty wine bottles with a red crust. This is
accomplished by suffering a saturated hot solution of super-tartrate of
potash, coloured red with a decoction of Brazil wood to chrystallize
within them. A similar operation is frequently performed on the wooden
cask which is to hold the wine, and which, in the same manner as the
bottle, is artificially stained with a red crust; and on some occasions,
the lower extremities of the corks in wine bottles are also stained red,
in order to give them the appearance of having been long in contact with
the wine. It is the business of a particular class of wine-coopers, by
means of an astringent extract mixed with home-made and foreign wines,
to produce ‘genuine old port,’ or to give an artificial flavour and
colour to weak wine; while the mellowing and restoring of spoiled white
wines is the occupation of another class called refiners of wine. Other
deceptions are practised by fraudulent dealers, which are still more
culpable. The most dangerous of these is where wine is adulterated by an
admixture of lead.
Mr. Accum justly observes, that the ‘merchant or dealer who practises
this dangerous sophistication, adds the crime of murder to that of
fraud, and deliberately scatters the seeds of disease and death among
those customers who contribute to his emolument.’