248 Professor Sheridan BeUpine [Feb. 13, 



All these tilings are often carried out by persons who have no 

 clear conception of the dangers associated with the use of certain 

 substances, and who look upon the preparation of articles of food 

 simply as a commercial matter. 



Artificial FroducHon of Food Stuffs. Arsenical Contamination of Beer 

 as the result of the use of a Manufactured Sugar. 



It is to this kind of ignorance that the severe outbreak of 

 arsenical poisoning, which afflicted the northern counties mostly, at 

 the end of the year 1900 was due. 



A certain manufacturer of brewing sugars did not take sufficient 

 care to ascertain the quality of the ingredients used in the manufacture 

 of his sugars ; in his ignorance he used large quantities of very impure 

 oil of vitriol, perfectly unfit for the preparation of an article of food. 

 The manufacturer of sulphuric acid also committed the indiscretion 

 of sending, without sufficient warning, to the glucose manufacturer a 

 very impure sulphuric acid instead of the purer article that he had 

 usually supplied. Now this impure sulphuric acid contained a large 

 amount of arsenic, a fact which he knew, and that the glucose 

 manufacturer should have known, and yet neither the one nor the 

 other suspected that their carelessness was endangering thousands of 

 lives. The brewers who used the sugars should have known that 

 glucose was liable to contain arsenic owing to the use of sulphuric 

 acid in its preparation, and yet it did not occur to them that such a 

 possibility invited careful supervision on their part. 



As a result of this ignorance many hundred people were rendered 

 very ill, and not a few died. 



Here we have a good example of the need of more knowledge 

 of the effects which may result from the use of artificial methods in 

 the preparation of food stuffs. 



It seems to me that, under a state of things which involves such 

 risks, the State may well exact a certain amount of knowledge on the 

 part of persons who undertake the manufacture of products which may 

 become such a source of danger. 



Arsenic in Fuel. Contamination of Malt, and of the Air of Tou'ns. 



The same inquiry led to other observations, which also show one 

 of the gradual changes which are taking place in our environment. 

 The search for arsenic in beer revealed the fact that much of the malt 

 prepared in the northern counties of England, and also elsewhere, 

 contained a fairly large amount of arsenic, and that this arsenic was 

 mostly derived from the fumes of the impure coke and coal burnt in 

 kilns where malt is heated and dried. The large amount of arsenic pre- 

 sent in certain samples of malt, led me to estimate the amount of arsenic 

 which accumulated in the flues of certain chimneys where Yorkshire 

 coal was burnt, and of stoves where gas coke was consumed. I found 

 in a sample of coal soot over 5 grains, and in a sample of coke soot 



