JOURNAL 



Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society. 



DECEMBER, 1905 

 VOL. XXI NO. 4 



LIBRARY 



FOOD ADULTERATION. 



>tanical 



BY ALVTN S. WHEELER 

 Associate Professor of Chemistry, University of North Carolina. 



The human body is a chemical laboratory in which fires are 

 kept up at nig-ht as well as by day. In it the most complicated 

 chemical reactions are carried out, many of which man can 

 neither reproduce nor understand. Some of the complex sub- 

 stances can be made by man at very hig-h temperatures, but 

 the body needs only its own moderate temperature. Here we 

 come face to face with one of the wonders of nature. The 

 food which we eat constitutes the fuel which feeds the fires, 

 and if this is not what it purports to be, then abnormal sub- 

 stances are produced, the machine is thrown out of gear — in 

 short, we are sick. The question of pure food is a vital one. 

 That we do not always get it is absolutely certain. To quote 

 a recent writer: "In these days of butter not traceable to the 

 cow, of wine innocent of the grape, of beer estranged from 

 hops and malt, of coffee-berries made in a mold and not grown 

 on a bush, of honey not made in a beehive but in a factory, 

 - and a thousand and one audacious frauds, we consume one 

 hundred million dollars' worth of fraudulently prepared food 



