18 POISON IN ODB FOOD. 



annual appropriation for use in investigating such adulterations, partly 

 for the sake of protecting honest producers. The proceedings of the 

 War Investigating Committee have resulted in a fiasco for the govern- 

 ment, but they have at least done good in calling the nation's attention 

 in a sensational way to this subject of " Death in the Pot." By a for- 

 tunate coincidence, official reports regarding the alarming extent of 

 food adulteration and poisoning have been recently prepared in several 

 States, and the result is that the press all over the country is discuss- 

 ing this matter. 



In Pennsylvania the Food and Dairy Commissioner, Levi Wells, 

 has ascertained that chemical companies have had agents traveling 

 regularly in the State to sell to butchers chemicals for preserving 

 meats, the favorite being apparently boracic acid, which <! is certainly 

 deleterious to health." The packages are labeled, telling how the 

 chemicals are to be used on meat. In Connecticut the Agricultural 

 Experiment Station issued on May 1 its annual report on the adultera- 

 tion of foods. It gives a summary of the extent to which frauds are 

 practiced on consumers, thanks to Yankee ingenuity, combined with 

 modern advances in chemistry. Of sixty-three samples of fruit jellies, 

 two-thirds were adulterated, not only with starch and glucose, but 

 with aniline dye and poisonous salicylic acid. Out of forty samples of 

 marmalades and jams only three were pure. Of forty-seven samples 

 of beer and ale, twelve contained salicylic acid, and nineteen samples 

 of sausages and oysters were found "embalmed" by boric acid. 



"The use of antiseptic as preservatives of food is becoming 

 alarmingly great," says Prof. Mitchell, analytical chemist of the Wis- 

 consin Dairy and Food Commission. Farmers mix them with milk 

 and butter, and they act disastrously on the tissues of the stomach. 

 Nearly every butcher in Illinois, he says, makes use, especially in the 

 preparation of " Hamburger steak," of preserving chemicals, including 

 sulphide of soda, a compound which checks fermentation, and there- 

 fore makes it difficult to digest the meat. A government expert 

 has testified that this chemical had been used by medical students to 

 preserve cadavers, and by physicians to disinfect houses where there 

 had been smallpox. At the recent sessions of the United States Pure 

 Food Investigating Committee in Chicago, the testimony of several 

 other experts was taken, all of whom agreed that the antiseptic chem- 

 icals so freely used in the preservation of food and drink are deleter- 

 ious, and in many cases poisonous. Dr. Wiley, chemist to the National 

 Agricultural Department, declared, among other things, that no food 

 which contains preservatives is fit to eat, and that probably the one 

 most commonly used, because of its cheapness, is salicylic acid, which 

 should be forbidden because it is very bad for the health, especially in 

 the case of weak stomachs. A pamphlet published by the Department 

 of Agriculture at Washington states that " the use of salicylic acid as 

 a food preservative has been forbidden by several European govern- 

 ments." Here it is used to a large extent, both by native canners and 

 by foreigners who take advantage of our situation. The department 



