put any faith in "real Dundee, an excellent substitute for butter," to be
seen piled in heaps in the cheap grocers' windows. Dr. Hassall's analysis
proves that this dainty is adulterated to a large extent with turnips,
apples, and carrots: we need not grumble so much at these vegetable
products, excepting on the score that it is a fraud to sell them at 7d. a
pound; but there is the more startling fact that, in twelve out of
fourteen samples analysed, copper was detected, and sometimes in large and
deleterious quantities!
Accum, in his "Death in the Pot," quotes, from cookery-books of reputation
in his day, recipes which make uninitiated persons stare. For instance,
"Modern Cookery, or the English Housewife," gives the following serious
directions "to make Greening:"--"Take a bit of _verdigris the bigness of
an hazel-nut_, finely powdered, half a pint of distilled vinegar, and a
bit of alum-powder, with a little baysalt; put all in a bottle and shake
it, and let it stand till clear. _Put a small teaspoonful into codlings,
or whatever you wish to green!_"
Again, the "English Housekeeper," a book which ran through eighteen
editions, directs--"to make pickles green _boil them with halfpence_, or
allow them to stand for twenty-four hours in copper or brass pans!" Has
the notable housewife ever wondered to herself how it is that all the
pickles of the shops are of so much more inviting colour than her own? We
will satisfy her curiosity in a word--she has forgotten the "bit of
verdigris the bigness of a hazel-nut," for it is now proved beyond doubt
that to this complexion do they come by the use of copper, introduced for
the sole purpose of making them of a lively green. The analyses of twenty
samples of pickles bought of the most respectable tradesmen proved,
firstly, that the vinegar in the bottles owed most of its strength to the
introduction of sulphuric acid; secondly, that, out of sixteen different
pickles analysed for the purpose, copper was detected in various amounts.
Thus, "two of the samples contained a small quantity; eight rather much,
one a considerable quantity, three a very considerable quantity; in one
copper was present in a highly deleterious amount, and in two _in
poisonous amounts_. The largest quantity of this metal was found in the
bottles consisting entirely of green vegetables, such as gherkins and
beans."
We trust after this the good housewife will feel jealous no longer, but
rest satisfied that the home-made article, if less inviting and vivid in
colour, is at least more wholesome. A simple test to discover the presence
of copper in such articles is to place a bright knitting-needle in the
vinegar, and let it remain there for a few hours, when the deleterious
metal will speedily form a coating over it, dense or thin, according to
the amount which exists. Wherever large quantities are found, it is
wilfully inserted for the purpose of producing the bright green colour,
but a small quantity may find its way into the pickles in the process of
boiling in copper pans. Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell, the great pickle and
preserve manufacturers in Soho, immediately they became aware, from the
analyses of the _Lancet_, that such was the case, in a very praiseworthy
manner substituted silver and glass, at a great expense, for all their
former vessels. The danger arising from the introduction of this virulent
poison into our food would not be so great if it were confined to pickles,
of which the quantity taken is small at each meal, but it is used to paint
all kinds of preserves, and fruits for winter pies and tarts are bloomed
with death. The papa who presents his children the box of sweetmeats
bedded in coloured paper, and enclosed in an elegant casket, may be
corroding unawares the very springs of their existence. As a general rule,
it is found that the red fruits, such as currants, raspberries, and
cherries, are uncontaminated with this deleterious metal, but owe their
deep hue to some red colouring matter, such as a decoction of logwood or
an infusion of beetroot, in the same way that common white cabbage is
converted into red by the nefarious pickle-merchant. The green fruits are
not all deleterious in the same degree; there seems to be an ascending
scale of virulence, much after the following manner:--Limes, gooseberries,
rhubarb, greengages, olives--the last-mentioned fruit, especially those of
French preparation, generally containing verdigris, or the acetate of
copper, _in highly dangerous quantities_. The _Lancet_ publishes a letter
from Mr. Bernays, F.C.S., dated from the Chemical Library, Derby, in which
he shows the necessity of watchfulness in the purchase of these articles
of food:--
"Of this," he says, "I will give you a late instance. I had bought a
bottle of preserved gooseberries from one of the most respectable
grocers in the town, and had its contents transferred to a pie. It
struck me that the gooseberries looked fearfully green when cooked;
and in eating one with a steel fork its intense bitterness sent me in
search of the sugar. After having sweetened and mashed the
gooseberries, with the same steel fork, I was about to convey some to
my mouth, when I observed the prongs to be completely coated with a
thin film of bright metallic copper. My testimony can be borne out by
the evidence of others, two of whom dined at my table."
It was fortunate that these three gentlemen used steel forks, which
instantly disclosed the mischief; if they had chanced to use silver, all
three might have fallen victims to these poisonous conserves.
But we are not yet at the worst. When Catherine de' Medici wished to get
rid of obnoxious persons in an "artistic" manner, she was in the habit of
presenting them with delicately made sweetmeats, or trinkets, in which
death lurked in the most engaging manner; she carried--
"Pure death in an earring, a casket,
A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket."
Her poisoned feasts are matters of history, at which people shudder as
they read; but we question if the diabolical revenge and coldblooded
wickedness of an Italian woman ever invented much more deadly trifles than
our low, cheap confectioners do on the largest scale. We select from some
of these articles of bonbonerie the following feast, which we set before
doting mothers, in order that they may see what deadly dainties are
prepared for the especial delectation of their children:--
"A FISH.
"_Purchased in Shepherd's Market, May Fair._
"The tip of the nose and the gills of the fish are coloured with the
usual pink, while the back and sides are highly painted with that
virulent poison _arsenite of copper_."
"A PIGEON.
"_Purchased in Drury Lane._
"The pigments employed for colouring this pigeon are light yellow for
the beak, red for the eyes, and orange yellow for the base or stand.
The yellow colour consists of the light kind of chromate of lead, for
the eyes bisulphate of mercury, and for the stand the deeper varieties
of chromate of lead, or orange chrome."
"APPLES.
"_Purchased in James Street, Covent Garden._
"The apples in this sample are coloured yellow, and on one side deep
red; the yellow colour extending to a considerable depth in the
substance of the sugar. The red consists of the usual non-metallic
pigment, and the yellow is due to the presence of CHROMATE OF LEAD in
really _poisonous amount_!"
"A COCK.
"_Purchased in Drury Lane._
"The beak of the bird is coloured bright yellow, the comb brilliant
red, the wings and tail are variegated, black, two different reds, and
yellow; while the stand, as in most of these sugar ornaments, is
painted green. The yellow of the beak consists of CHROMATE OF LEAD;
the comb and part of the red colour on the back and wings is
VERMILION; while the second red colour on the wings and tail is the
usual pink non-metallic colouring matter, and the stripes of yellow
consist of gamboge; lastly, the green of the stand is MIDDLE BRUNSWICK
GREEN, and, therefore, contains CHROMATE OF LEAD. In the colouring of
this article, then, no less than three active poisons are employed, as
well as that drastic purgative gamboge!"
"ORANGES.
"_Purchased in Pilgrim Street, Doctors' Commons._
"This is a very unnatural imitation of an orange, it being coloured
with a coarse and very uneven coating of RED LEAD."
"MIXED SUGAR ORNAMENTS.
"_Purchased in Middle Row, Holborn._
"The confectionery in this parcel is made up into a variety of forms
and devices, as hats, jugs, baskets, and dishes of fruit and
vegetables. One of the hats is coloured yellow with CHROMATE OF LEAD,
and has a green hatband round it, coloured with ARSENITE OF COPPER; a
second hat is white, with a blue hatband, the pigment being
PRUSSIAN-BLUE. The baskets are coloured yellow with CHROMATE OF LEAD.
Into the colouring of the pears and peaches the usual non-metallic
pigment, together with CHROMATE OF LEAD and MIDDLE BRUNSWICK GREEN,
enter largely; while the carrots represented in a dish are coloured
throughout with a RED OXIDE OF LEAD, and the tops with BRUNSWICK
GREEN. This is one of the worst of all the samples of coloured sugar
confectionery submitted to analysis, as it contains no less than four
_deadly poisons_!"
The painted feast contains, then, among its highly injurious ingredients,
ferrocyanide of iron or Prussian-blue, Antwerp-blue, gamboge, and
ultramarine, and among its deadly poisons the three chrome yellows, red
lead, white lead, vermilion, the three Brunswick greens, and Scheele's
green or arsenite of copper. The wonder is that, considering we set such
poison-traps for children, ten times more enticing and quite as deadly as
those used to bane rats, that the greater number of youngsters who partake
of them are not at once despatched; and so undoubtedly they would be if
nurses were not cautious about these coloured parts, which have always
enjoyed a bad name under the general denomination of "trash and messes."
As it is, we are informed by Dr. Letheby that "no less than seventy cases
of poisoning have been traced to this source" within three years!
In France, Belgium, and Switzerland the colouring of confectionery with
poisonous pigments is prohibited, and the vendors are held responsible for
all accidents which may occur to persons from eating their sugar
confectionery. It is absolutely essential that some such prohibition
should be made in England. Arsenic, according to law, must be sold
coloured with soot, in order that its hue may prevent its being used by
mistake for other substances; how absurd it is that we should allow other
poisons, quite as virulent, to be mixed with the food of children and
adults, merely for the sake of the colour! All kinds of sugar-plums,
comfits, and "kisses," in addition to being often adulterated with large
quantities of plaster of Paris, are always open to the suspicion of being
poisoned. Necessity cannot be urged for the continuance of this wicked
practice, as there are plenty of vegetable pigments which, if not quite as
vivid as the acrid mineral ones, are sufficiently so to please the eye. Of
late years a peculiar lozenge has been introduced, in which the flavour of
certain fruits is singularly imitated. Thus we have essence of jargonel
drops, essence of pine-apple drops, and many others of a most delicate
taste. They really are so delicious that we scarcely like to create a
prejudice against them; but the truth is great, and must prevail: all
these delicate essences are made from a preparation of æther and rancid
cheese and butter.
The manufacturer, perhaps unaware of the cumulative action of many of his
chemicals, thinks that the small quantity can do no harm. We have seen, in
the matter of preserved fruits and sugar confectionery, how fallacious is
that idea. But the practice of adulteration often leads to lamentable
results of the same nature, which are quite unintentional on the part of
their perpetrators, and which occur in the most roundabout manner. An
instance of this is related by Accum, which goes directly to the point. A
gentleman, perceiving that an attack of colic always supervened upon
taking toasted Gloucestershire cheese at an inn at which he was in the
habit of stopping, and having also noticed that a kitten which had
partaken of its rind was rendered violently sick, had the food analyzed,
when it was found that lead was present in it in poisonous quantities.
Following up his inquiries, he ascertained that the maker of the cheese,
not finding his annatto sufficiently deep in colour, had resorted to the
expedient of colouring the commodity with vermilion. This mixture,
although pernicious and discreditable, was not absolutely poisonous, and
certainly could not account for the disastrous effects of the food on the
human system. Trying back still further, however, it was at last found
that the druggist who sold the vermilion had mixed with it a portion of
_red lead_, imagining that the pigment was only required for house paint.
"Thus," as Accum remarks, "the druggist sold his vermilion, in a regular
way of trade, adulterated with red lead, to increase his profit, without
any suspicion of the use to which it would be applied; and the purchaser
who adulterated the annatto, presuming that the vermilion was genuine, had
no hesitation in heightening the colour of his annatto with so harmless an
adjunct. Thus, through the diversified and circulatory operations of
commerce, a portion of deadly poison may find admission into the
necessaries of life in a way that can attach no criminality to the parties
through whose hands it has successively passed." The curious aspect of
this circuitous kind of poisoning is, that it occurs through the belief of
each adulterating rogue in the honesty of his neighbour.
If we could possibly eliminate, from the mass of human disease, that
occasioned by the constant use of deleterious food, we should find that it
amounted to a very considerable percentage on the whole, and that one of
the best friends of the doctor would prove to be the adulterator. But even
our refuge fails us in our hour of need; the tools of the medical man,
like those of the sappers and miners before Sebastopol, often turn out to
be worthless. Drugs and medical comforts are perhaps adulterated as
extensively as any other article. To mention only a few familiar and
household medicines for instance: Epsom salts are adulterated with
sulphate of soda; carbonate of soda with sulphate of soda--a very
injurious substitute. Mercury is sometimes falsified with lead, tin, and
bismuth; gentian with the poisonous drugs aconite and belladonna; rhubarb
with turmeric and gamboge; cantharides with black pepper; and cod-liver
and castor-oils with common and inferior oils; whilst opium, one of the
sheet-anchors of the physician, is adulterated to the greatest extent in a
dozen different ways. Medical comforts are equally uncertain. Thus
potato-flour forms full half of the so-called arrowroots of commerce;
sago-meal is another very common ingredient in this nourishing substance.
Out of fifty samples of so-styled arrowroot, Dr. Hassall found twenty-two
adulterated, many of them consisting _entirely_ of potato-flour and
sago-meal. One half of the common oatmeals to be met with are adulterated
with barley-meal, a much less nutritious substance--an important fact,
which boards of guardians should be acquainted with. Honey is
sophisticated with flour-starch and sugar-starch. And lastly, we wish to
say something important to mothers. Put no faith in the hundred and one
preparations of farinaceous food for infants which are paraded under so
many attractive titles. They are all composed of wheat-flour,
potato-flour, sago, &c.,--very familiar ingredients, which would not take
with anxious parents unless christened with extraordinary names, for which
their compounders demand an extraordinary charge. To invalids we would
also say, place no reliance on the Revalentas and Ervalentas advertised
through the country as cures for all imaginary diseases. They consist
almost entirely of lentil-powder, barley-flour, &c., which are charged
cent. per cent. above their real value.
Of all the articles we have touched upon, not one is so important as
water. It mixes more or less with all our solid food, and forms
nine-tenths of all our drinks. Man himself, as a sanitary writer has
observed, is in great part made up of this element, and if you were to put
him under a press you would squeeze out of him 8-1/2 pailfuls. That it
should be furnished pure to the consumer is of the first importance in a
sanitary and economic point of view. We are afraid, however, that but
feeble attempts have been made to secure this advantage to the metropolis.
At present London, with its two and a half millions of population, is
mainly supplied by nine water companies, six of which derive their supply
from the Thames, one from the New River, one from the Ravensbourne, and a
third from ponds and wells. Besides this supply, which ramifies like a
network over the whole metropolis, we find dotted about both public and
private wells of various qualities. We do not intend to follow Dr. Hassall
into his microscopic representations of the organic matter, vegetable and
animal, by which the customers of one company can compare the water served
to them with that dealt out to others, and thus at a glance assure
themselves that they have not more than their share of many-legged,
countless-jointed, hideous animalculæ, which look formidable enough to
frighten one from ever touching a drop of London water, but shall content
ourselves with giving the general characteristics of the whole of them.
With one exception they were all of a hardness ranging from 11 to 18
degrees. This hardness depends upon the earthy salts present, such as
sulphates and bicarbonates of lime and magnesia. They were also to some
extent saline, as all the salt used in the metropolis ultimately finds its
way into the Thames, or great sewer-stream. Not long ago two, at least, of
these six Thames water companies procured their supply within a short
distance of the mouths of great drains, and all of them resorted to the
river at different points below Battersea, or that portion of it which
receives the drainage of the metropolis, and is consequently crowded with
animal and vegetable matter, both living and dead, and thick with the mud
stirred up by the passage to and fro of the steamers. The violent outcry
made, however, by the Board of Health, caused an Act to be passed by
parliament against the supply of the sewage rates, and now all the
companies taking their supplies from the Thames, are compelled to go at
least as high as Kingston, and to submit them to a process of filtration;
but even at this point the river is in some degree sewage-tainted, and
the chemically-combined portion of baser matter cannot be removed by any
filter.
The impurities of the Thames are not all we have to deal with--its
hardness must cost the Londoners hundreds of thousands a year in the
article of soap alone. The action upon lead is also marked; hence we find
poisonous carbonates of that metal held in solution. Plumbers are well
aware of this fact, and frequently meet with leaden cisterns deeply
corroded. This corrosion may arise from either chemical or voltaic action.
The junction of lead and solder, or iron, immersed in water impregnated
with salts or acid of any kind, will cause erosion of the metal. A
familiar instance of this is seen in the rapid manner in which iron
railings rust away just where they are socketed in the stonework with
lead. The presence of a piece of mortar on the lead of a cistern may even
set up this action, and result in giving a whole family the colic.
The pumps of the metropolis are liable to even more contamination than
river-water, inasmuch as the soil surrounding them is saturated with the
sewage of innumerable cesspools, and with that arising from the leakage of
imperfect drains. Medical men entertained the opinion that the terrible
outbreak of cholera in Broad Street, Golden Square, in 1854, arose from
the fact that the people in the neighbourhood were in the habit of
visiting a public pump which was proved to be foul with drain-water, and
the handle of which was taken off, to prevent further mischief. Some of
these public pumps appear to yield excellent water--cold, clear, and
palatable; but the presence of these qualities by no means proves that
they are pure. The bright sparkling icy water issuing from the famous
Aldgate pump, according to Mr. Simon, the city officer of health, owes its
most prized qualities to the nitrates which have filtered into the well
from the decaying animal matter in an adjoining churchyard.
The porter and stout of the metropolis have long been famous. The virtues
of the latter drink are celebrated all over the world; and a royal duke,
ascribed the great mortality among the guards in the East to the want of
their favourite beverage. No doubt the pure liquor, as it comes from the
great brewers, is wholesome and strengthening; but it no sooner gets into
the possession of the publicans than, in a great majority of cases, the
article is made up. A stranger would naturally suppose that the foaming
tankard of Meux's entire which he quaffs at the "Marquis of Granby" has an
identical flavour with that at the "Blue Boar," where the same brewer's
name shines resplendent on the house-front. Not a bit of it: one shall be
smooth, pleasantly bitter, slightly acid, and beaded with a fine and
persistent froth; the other, bitter with the bitterness of soot, salt,
clammy, sweet, and frothing with a coarse and evanescent froth. The body
of the liquor is undoubtedly the same, but the variations are all supplied
by the publicans and sinners. We do not make _émeutes_, as they are
continually doing in Bavaria, on account of our beer; but we have strong
feelings on a matter of such national importance; and the wicked ways of
brewers and publicans have been made, over and over again, the subject of
parliamentary inquiry. The reports of various committees prove that, in
times past, porter and stout were doctored in the most ingenious manner,
and so universally and unreservedly, that a trade sprang up termed
brewers' druggists, whose whole business it was to supply to the
manufacturers and retailers of the national beverage, ingredients for its
adulteration; nay, to such an extent did the taste for falsifying beer and
porter extend, that one genius, hight Jackson, wrote a hand-book to show
the brewers how to make Beer _without any Malt or Hops at all_! Accum has
preserved, in his now antique pages, some of the recipes in vogue in his
day. The boldness with which our fathers went to work is amusing. For
instance, Mr. Child, in his "Practical Treatise on Brewing," after having
made his non-professional reader aghast by mentioning a score of
pernicious articles to be used in beer, remarks, in the mildest possible
manner,--
"That, however much they may surprise--however pernicious or
disagreeable they may appear, he has always found them requisite in
the brewing of porter, and he thinks they must invariably be used by
those who wish to continue the taste, flavour, and effervescence of
the beer. And, though several acts of Parliament have been passed to
prevent porter brewers from using many of them, yet the author can
affirm, from experience, he could never produce the present flavoured
porter without them. _The intoxicating qualities of porter are to be
ascribed to the various drugs intermixed with it._ It is evident some
porter is more heady than other, and it arises from the greater or
less quantity of stupefying ingredients. Malt, to produce
intoxication, must be used in such large quantities as would very much
diminish, if not totally exclude, the brewer's profit."