72 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
and their effect on river water, work which is just recently being followed 
up by an Advisory Committee to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. 
The contamination of the atmosphere is a subject of concern to the 
Ministry of Health working under Acts from 1863 onwards. Limits have 
been set to the discharge of noxious and offensive gases, and the control 
is in the hands of a number of chemical inspectors, who have in addition 
carried out a large number of investigations of importance to general health 
and to industry. The contamination of the air in cities is watched by the 
Meteorological Office, which records the quantity of soot falling in different 
parts of the country. By such means the public conscience is being 
awakened to the necessity for carrying out work on the provision of a 
smokeless fuel, a subject engaging the attention of the Government Fuel 
Research Station. . 
Chemical control is also concerned with the question of danger to health 
arising in certain trades, such as that of the manufacture of matches, in 
which red was substituted by law for white phosphorus, with the limitation 
of lead in glazes, with the nature of the gases in mines, and with manufac- 
tures in which poisonous substances such as nitrobenzene and nitrous 
fumes are produced. 
In 1900 there was a serious outbreak of sickness attributable to poison- 
ing by arsenic, and a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into 
the cases and to ascertain by what safeguards the introduction of arsenic 
to food could be prevented. A very large amount of chemical work was 
carried out in connection with this inquiry, and considerable attention 
was paid to the methods for the detection and examination of arsenic. 
Among those contributing specially to the problems may be mentioned 
Dr. George McGowan, the Government Laboratory, and a Joint Committee 
of the Societies of Public Analysts and Chemical Industry. At the Govern- 
ment Laboratory an electrolytic apparatus was devised in which the use 
of zinc for the production of hydrogen was not necessary. This apparatus 
has been modified by replacement of the expensive platinum cathode 
originally used by lead coated with mercury, which has been found to give 
very satisfactory results. 
It was not until the end of 1916 when the war had continued for more 
than two years that the control of the food supply of the country passed 
into the hands of a Ministry of Food. In the meantime much work of a 
scientific nature had been done in the way of endeavouring to educate the 
people on food values. A pioneer in this direction was Professor W. H. 
Thompson, who occupied the Chair of Physiology in Trinity College, Dublin, 
and who became later Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Food. He was | 
unfortunately lost in the sinking of the Irish mail boat in which he was a 
passenger. Thompson communicated to the Royal Dublin Society early 
in 1915 an important paper dealing with the energy value and chemical 
constitution of foods, subsequently published as a pamphlet under the 
title of “ The Food Value of Great Britain’s Food Supply.’ The question 
of the food supply of the United Kingdom was receiving attention in 1916 
from a Committee of the Royal Society which included among its members 
distinguished chemists, and at the request of the Board of Trade the 
Committee drew up a report on the food supply in which much of Thomp- 
son’s work was incorporated. It is interesting to note that in the main the 
values given by Atwater in the ‘ Chemical Composition of American Food 
