SCOPE AND PROBLEMS xix 



ment in finding that the motive of the manufacturer, in practice at 

 least, works out quite to the contrary. 



There are several reasons that may be given for the conditions 

 that have prevailed in commercial life up until very recently. In 

 the first place the public could not distinguish whether the com- 

 modities they were buying were pure or adulterated. Then price 

 competition and the demand of the public for " cheap foods and 

 cheap drugs " must have caused manufacturers at first to shorten 

 the process of purification, and this was but a step leading to the 

 addition of more or less harmless substances until finally harmful 

 foods and inert drugs were generally exploited. A third factor was 

 the lack of knowledge on the part of the manufacturers and dealers 

 to distinguish genuine foods and drugs from those which were adul- 

 terated, spurious or worthless. This condition was remedied so soon 

 as analytical data concerning the composition of foods and drugs 

 were published in the scientific journals and some of the State Boards 

 of Health employed analysts who published reports from time to 

 time on market conditions. 



These published results were rather startling, as up to within 

 fifteen years ago it was stated that " of the whole food supply of the 

 country one-seventh is adulterated." One can readily obtain figures 

 in any of the pharmaceutical journals during the past ten years 

 showing that something like 50 per cent of the powdered drugs upon 

 the market were adulterated. The trade in spices was even worse, 

 for we read that " the adulteration of spices is a practice so common 

 that we would really be surprised to find goods pass through the 

 grocery trade that are absolutely pure." This condition, of course, 

 could not continue indefinitely, and fortunately a few manufacturers, 

 who valued the reputation of their products even more than the money 

 they could make out of them, lent support to National and State legis- 

 lation which should fix standards of purity for foods and drugs. 

 This finally ended in the passage of the Food and Drugs Act in 1906, 

 which was followed by co-operative legislation in the various states. 



The Microscope has been employed in the examination of drugs 

 since 1847, when Schleiden used it in the examination of the sarsa- 

 parillas. In 1853 Schacht showed its value in the examination of 

 textile fibers. The earliest reference in English to the use of the 

 microscope as a means of detecting the admixture or adulteration 

 of drugs is the statement of Professor Pereira in his introductory 

 lecture before the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1851, 

 when he said: " You are doubtless conversant with the recent very 

 extensive employment of the microscope for disclosing the adultera 



