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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 172 



of their members as well as the quality of 

 goods sold. The penalties they inflicted 

 were often severe and always humiliating. 

 Among them may be mentioned expulsion 

 from the guild, exposition in the pillory, 

 emersion in muddy water and public whip- 

 ping. Indeed, instances are recorded in 

 which the oiienders were burned at the 

 stake. Finally, a Biebrich dealer was sen- 

 tenced to drink six quarts of the adulter- 

 ated wine with which he supplied his cus- 

 tomers, an early instance of making the 

 punishment fit the crime. 



The fifteenth century brings with it the 

 mariner's compass, the practical applica- 

 tion of the art of printing, the organization 

 banks, important maritime discoveries and 

 a rapid growth of manufactures and com- 

 merce. In this century, however, and in 

 the three succeeding, compai'atively little 

 progress was made in pure food legislation, 

 though the practice of adulteration increased 

 with the growth of commerce. From time 

 to time the wine and beer laws were made 

 more stringent. In the sixteenth century 

 Censors appointed by the College of Physi- 

 cians in England were empowered to in- 

 vestigate and punish irregularities in the 

 sale of drugs and in the practice of ruedi- 

 cine. Clauses prohibiting the sale of adul- 

 terated goods were included in the Danish 

 code, and pharmacopoeias were compiled in 

 England and Germany in the seventeenth 

 century, and in the eighteenth century laws 

 were passed in England which had for their 

 purpose the increase of the revenues by 

 means of regulating the adulterations of 

 coffee and tea. 



In four centuries, however, no great prog- 

 ress in food legislation was made, nor was 

 it possible till iatrorchemistry had ceased 

 to exist, till the phlogiston theory had be- 

 come a thing of the past, and the balance 

 and the microscope had enabled us to judge 

 of the purity and quality of the food we 

 examine. Before the present century it 



would have been impossible to enforce a 

 general food law because of the lack of 

 methods to detect adulterants. A single 

 illustration of the crudeness of the early 

 methods will suifice. In the sixteenth cen- 

 tury Ale- tasters wei-e appointed in England, 

 whose duty it was to examine all ale before 

 it could be sold. They were instructed) 

 among other things, to pour a little of the 

 ale they were examining on a bench and 

 sit on it, and if their leather breeches stuck 

 to the bench the presence of added sugar 

 was definitely proven. 



In 1802 the Conseil de Salubrite was es- 

 tablished in Paris, and similar organiza- 

 tions in other cities and some of the prov- 

 inces soon followed. These committees 

 gave close attention to the question of food 

 adulteration and the progress made in this 

 direction in the first half of this century 

 was largely due to them. During the same 

 period laws were passed in England rela- 

 ting to the adulteration of several articles of 

 food. The penal codes in the Netherlands 

 and in the Scandinavian peninsula con- 

 tained clauses regulating the sale of adul- 

 terants and damaged goods, which have 

 only been rigidly enforced within the last 

 forty years. 



The middle of the present century marked 

 a new and most important era. The methods 

 of quantitative analysis had for the first time 

 been effectively applied to the examination 

 of foods. The microscopist had made great 

 progress in his field, and more than a be- 

 ginning had been made in the study of vege- 

 table histology. Adulterants which might 

 and did pass without suspicion twenty or 

 ten years earlier wei-e then detected with 

 certainty, and the analyst could follow the 

 manufacturer and discover each new cheat 

 as it took the place of an old one which had 

 been exposed. It must not be supposed, 

 however, that all abuses were immediately 

 corrected, or even that the progress of re- 

 form was easy and rapid. 



