536 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



" These affidavits are from rectifiers and distillers, members 

 of the wholesale and retail liquor trade and scientists and 

 chemists of high rank. They do not agree. Indeed, it may 

 be said that some of them present diametrically opposite views 

 more or less elaborately stated. 



" In brief, the affidavits for complainants tend to support the 

 proposition that a distilled spirit from grain reduced by water 

 to potable strength from which most of the fusel oil has been 

 removed by rectification is whisky and that all distilled spirits 

 from grain are ' like substances,' without reference to differences 

 in their percentage of alcohol or of secondary products present 

 therein. 



" The affidavits presented for defendants tend to support the 

 view that whisky is a product made by the proper distilling of 

 a fermented mash of grain with such care and at such low tem- 

 perature as to retain the congeneric ingredients of the grain, 

 aged under a normal temperature for not less than four years in 

 charred oak casks. Thus broadly in statement do the chemists 

 disagree. They are more or less persuasive to the court accord- 

 ing to the soundness of scientific reasoning given in support of 

 their statements." 



After a careful review of the arguments and the statements 

 in the affidavits, Mr. Justice Humphrey ruled in favour of the 

 defendants. 



It is undoubtedly true that, before the courts in the United 

 States at least, the testimony of the experts who appear for 

 the State, in the capacity of protectors of the public health, 

 carries greater weight and is considered of greater importance 

 than the testimony of even more eminent scientific men on the 

 other side. In fact it is difficult to see how an added substance 

 of the kind I have mentioned is harmless. You might prove 

 that it did not injure a certain number of individuals to whom 

 it had been administered but you could go no further. A 

 positive statement respecting the injurious effects of such 

 added bodies would overcome a vast amount of testimony as 

 to their negative effects. 



In the United States at the present time the situation in 

 regard to added antiseptics is as follows : 



Certain of them are forbidden, as for instance, boron com- 

 pounds, formaldehyde and salicylic acid. One antiseptic is 

 permitted by a special regulation, namely benzoic acid. The 

 regulation permitting its use reads as follows : 



" It having been determined that benzoate of soda mixed 



