104 



rapid communications ; witness the enormous number of 

 patent specialities usually of boric compounds and salt, 

 such as Arcticanus, Keeps' Preservative, Glacialin. 

 Preservitas, Sal preservare, Preservalin, Berlinite, 

 Magdeburg salt, boro-glyceride, etc., etc. ; the wide 

 advertisements and large sales of these show how greatly 

 they are used, and it has been stated that "practically 

 every person in the United Kingdom who has passed the 

 suckling stage consumes daily more or less food con- 

 taining chemical preservatives " (Thresh and Porter). 

 Here in India the case for the moderate and skilled use 

 of preservatives is much stronger for the obvious reasons 

 above stated ; we have to decide between, on the one 

 hand, the continuance of a very scanty supply of food 

 not only unnecessarily scanty but often so tainted as to be 

 very deleterious to health, and, on the other hand, the 

 moderate use of simple and innocuous preservatives ; 

 with preservatives we can render wholesome the existing 

 supply and immensely develop that supply ; without 

 preservatives we must to a very great extent continue as 

 we are. 



That is the choice laid before us in this tropical climate 

 and in the absence of refrigeration, viz., either to refuse 

 a great increase to our food supply and favour the con- 

 tinuance of a small, septic, dangerous, and often toxic 

 supply, or to accept the moderate use of preservatives and 

 antiseptics which are known to be absolutely innocuous 

 in the small and occasional quantities which consumers 

 offish might possibly t3k<e,\ possibly, but not necessarily, 

 since the preservatives tend to disappear, and sometimes 

 wholly disappear, in the processes of curing, washing, 

 cooking, etc. The Parliamentary Departmental Com- 

 mittee on Food Preservatives in 1901 deliberately 

 recorded the following verdict : — 



" We have come to the conclusion that as reo^ards 

 the trade in fresh and cured meat,yf.sV/, butter, margarine, 

 and other food substances in the consumption of which 

 but small (juantities of the antiseptic are taken into the 

 system, there exists no sufficient reason for interfering 

 to prevent the use of boron preservatives." 



It will be observed that butter and margarine are 

 included, in which substances the preservatives are 

 intermixed and consequently taken in their entirety into 

 the system, whereas they are used chieliy as a mere 



