278 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



Dr. Hassall, chief analyst of the Sanitary Commission of the 

 Lancet, from 1851 to 1854, just published in London, made re- 

 markable discoveries of infamous adulterations in human food, 

 by means of powerful microscopes — discoveries which chemical 

 analysis was unable to effect. The list is long. Ground coffee, 

 pure Mocha, made chiefly of oak and mahogany saw dust. Best 

 Durham mustard of flour and turmeric, a dye-stuff. Vinegar, the 

 best, of sulphuric acid water, and a little vegetable acid. Pep- 

 per out of oiled linseed cake, clay, and some cayenne, made up 

 in mass and granulated, 17 per cent of this stuff added to real 

 pepper. In the cayenne pepper crust we have twenty-four sorts, 

 made of white mustard seed, brick-dust, salt, ground rice and 

 deal saw-dust, for bulk. Tremble ! lovers of high seasoned food ! 

 It is made of a good red color by a deadly poison — Red lead ! 

 Curry powder ! Red lead is here also ! Imagine a man paint- 

 ing his stomach with red lead ! 



Sausages ! The public is prejudiced against them, and not 

 without reason. The Smithfield Market Commissioners, in 1850, 

 took testimony. The old joke that there are no live donkeys 

 within twenty miles of Epping, would not supply our sausage 

 meat. Other supplies are needed. Mr. J. Harper, under exam- 

 ination as a witness before the commissioners, testified that the 

 diseased meat brought into London is purchased by the soup- 

 shops, sausage makers, the alamode and meat pie shops, &c. 

 There is one soup house, I believe doing business to the value 

 of five hundred pounds sterling, ($2,000,) a week in diseased 

 meat ! The shop has a large foreign trade. The trade in dis- 

 eased meat is alarming. It is sold for o?ie jyenny a poundl A hun- 

 dred dead cows, no matter of what disease, in the vicinity of 

 London, can all be sold in the city in a day. Diseased meat 

 comes from the country in large quantities. 



Bread is made with addition of plaster of Paris, bone-dust, 

 white clay, alum, sulphate of copper and potatoes. Tea ! La- 

 dies ! There is death in the tea-pot ! We fear this will fall like 

 a bomb shell upon many a tea table. Green tea drinkers bewai-e ! 

 Since the introduction of tea, it is certain that nervous complaints 

 of all kinds have greatly increased. There is no such thing as 

 pure green tea ia England. The Chinese color it for us with 

 Prussian blue and gypsum. They say the foreigners will have it 

 so. They (the Chinese) never drink that. They say tea is bet- 

 ter without it. In every hundred pounds of our green tea we 

 drink over half a pound of prussian blue and gypsum, a deleteri- 



