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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



discovered by the commission refeiTed 

 to above in the course of a single week, 

 and no cases have been reported that 

 were not fatal. The State has now 

 been aroused, and has appropriated 

 $100,000 for the Board of Health to use 

 in the suppiession of the epidemic. 

 One branch of the Legislature passed a 

 most extraordinary bill, making it 

 a felony to publish, by writing or print- 

 ing, that Asiatic cholera or bubonic 

 plague exists within the State, unless 

 the fact has been determined by the 

 State Board of Health and entered 

 upon its minutes, but this measure ap- 

 pears now to have been dropped. The 

 San Francisco papers have apparently 

 been only too ready to suppress infor- 

 mation in regard to the plague in that 

 city. It appears that the epidemic is 

 slight, but it will naturally be exagger- 

 ated by attempts to deny its existence 

 for commercial reasons. 



Within the past six months the at- 

 tention of the English public has been 

 attracted in an unwonted degree to the 

 question of the purity of alcoholic liq- 

 uors. There occurred last fall, in Lan- 

 cashire, and especially in Manchester 

 and its vicinity, large numbers of cases 

 of arsenical poisoning, which were 

 finally traced to the consumption of a 

 particular brand of beer. Further in- 

 vestigation revealed the fact that the 

 manufacturers of this beer usedj in 

 brewing, glucose of a certain make, and 

 that the manufacturers of this glucose 

 had recently begun to use in its prep- 

 aration a sulfuric acid which was made 

 from pyrites containing, as is almost 

 invariably the case, arsenic. Prior to 

 this time it appears that the sulfuric 

 acid used had been that made from sul- 

 fur. It was a long chain of evidence, 

 but was complete, for arsenic was found 

 in the beer, in the glucose, in the acid 

 and in the pyrites, and the amount 

 found in the beer corresponded to that 

 in the ingredients used in its manu- 

 facture. The quantity was amply suffi- 

 cient to occasion all the symptoms of 

 poisoning whidi were noticed. Several 



points of interest have been brought out 

 in the voluminous discussions which 

 have followed this incident, or tragedy, 

 as it would be better to call it. In the 

 first place, attention has been called 

 to the difficulty of detecting arsenic in 

 beer and similar liquids by methods 

 \A'hich had been commonly used. In 

 this way several analysts were led to 

 pronounce beer to be free from arsenic, 

 which was afterwards shown by other 

 methods to contain notable quantities 

 of the poison. It now appears that 

 the test most to be relied on in such 

 cases is that of Reinsch, which consists 

 essentially in boiling the beer, strongly 

 acidified with pure hydrochloric acid, 

 with clean copper foil, and then sublim- 

 ing the black deposit obtained on the 

 copper, if arsenic is present, in a glass 

 tube. The presence of a sublimate of 

 bright octahedral crystals of arsenious 

 oxid is certain evidence of arsenic in the 

 beer. Difficulties in carrying out the 

 ordinary tests for arsenic with many 

 beers^ which were examined in large 

 numbers when the public had been 

 aroused to the danger of contaminated 

 beer, led to the discovery of substances 

 added to the beer, which had no legiti- 

 mate place in brewing, and which bid 

 fair to occasion a much closer super- 

 vision of this industry in the future. 

 Attention has been called also to other 

 industries where sulfuric acid is used, 

 and where arsenic which may be present 

 would be carried over into products 

 destined for general consumption. This 

 is especially true in the case of many 

 substances used in pharmacy. It has 

 also been shown that inasmuch as sulfur 

 is always accompanied by small quan- 

 tities of the rare element selenium, it 

 is not impossible that its compounds, 

 which are very poisonous, may often be 

 present in sufficient quantity to exert 

 a deleterious influence. 



This subject has been given a some- 

 \\hat different turn by the work of Sir 

 Lauder Brunton and Dr. Tunnicliffe 

 upon the injurious constituents of dis- 

 tilled liquors. It is now nearly a scoi-e 



