OLEOMARGARINE AND BUTTERINE. II 



manufacture of oleomargarine and other bogus butter raised a storm of indignation among 

 those engaged in the making of the nefarious compounds ; and the organ of that interest, an, 

 obscure journal that has little patronage save among the manufacturers of an article that is 

 legally excluded from the markets of the State, indulges in gross abuse of Assistant State 

 Dairy Commissioner Van Valkenburgh. That gentleman, in speaking of the article said : 



" The list was prepaicd in my office, and under my personal supervision. It was made 

 up from the records of the Patent Office in Washington, copies of which were forwarded at 

 my request, and every article mentioned in that list appears in those patents. It is fair to- 

 presume that when certain articles are named in an application for a patent as essential for its 

 perfection, those articles will be used. I took it for granted that all the drugs, chemicals, and 

 foreign substances mentioned in these patents were used. If not, what was the necessity for 

 mentioning them? In preparing my list, I used the names of no articles that did not appear 

 on the Patent Office records. In sending it to members of the trade, I took care to use 

 the words : ' And claimed by them (the manufacturers of oleomargarine) to be used in the 

 manufacture of oleomargarine and butterine.' The writer of the article in the organ of the 

 bogus butter trade goes into an analysis of the articles mentioned in my list, and essays to 

 prove that none of them is injurious to public health, but fails to deny specifically the use of 

 any of the articles used. Some he sets down as practically useless, and others as too expen- 

 sive, but he does not say that they are not used. Still, he does make use of one significant 

 remark that is worthy of mention. He says : * The seventeen patentees, if a number of the 

 sixty articles mentioned by Mr. Van Valkenburgh can be taken as evidence, show more wis- 

 dom than he, for they take care that many of the constituents or articles used cannot be recog- 

 nized from the names given in the above enumerated list.' 



" To be sure they do, and perhaps it was just as well for them that the articles constituting 

 their product could not be recognized. The fact is that these people see that their counterfeit 

 butter is doomed, and are ready to resort to any expedient to postpone the inevitable. The 

 writer of that article shows that some of the drugs mentioned in my list are largely and bene- 

 ficially used as curatives. So they are. I am ready to admit that ; but then the question is, 

 Do we want medicine spread upon our bread and served at every meal we eat ? Salicylic acid, , 

 I am told, is good for the rheumatism, but when I suffer from that disease do I need to go to 

 a butter tub for treatment ? I should add that on my list I was careful not to mention any 

 names, and also to explain that the sixty articles covered all the patents and were not to be. 

 considered as> being conjointly used in any one process." 



THE EFFECT OF NITRIC ACID. 



The following from The New York Star of January 25th, 1886, is worthy of presentation.' 

 here in full : 



It is authoritatively said that another effort is to be made this winter by the oleomargarine 

 men to prove to the satisfaction of the Legislature of this State that the butterine and other 

 oleaginous compounds that are furnished by them to retailers, who sell them as butter to con- 

 sumers, in violation of the law, are wholesome. In view of the digestive and microscopical' 

 experiments made for the Dairy Commissioner by Prof. Clark, of Albany, and detailed in his 

 report, this is likely to prove an uphill task. Prof. Clark made a specialty of the physiological: 

 features of his subject, making experiments in digestion and microscopical investigations, and* 

 in other ways showing the importance of public health of a thorough knowledge of what enters- 

 into any food product. As a result of his researches he arrived at the conclusion that oleo- 

 margarine is unwholesome and dangerous to health for four reasons. First, because it is in- 

 digestible ; second, because it is insoluble when made from animal fats ; third, that it is liable- 

 to carry the germs of disease into the human system ; and fourth, that in the eagerness oT 

 manufacturers to produce their spurious compounds cheaply they are temp ted. to use ingredi- 

 ents which are detrimental to the health of the consumer. 



