17 



**I request that you willbriug this matter to the attention of the proper officials, 

 and give such instructions as may be necessary to carry the law into effect. In case 

 that successive or important cases of this nature may he found within your juris- 

 diction, you are requested to report the facts to this Department in order that if 

 necessary further and more stringent regulations may be provided, j)erhaps by the 

 entire suppression of the sale of apples containing zinc, under authority of para- 

 grajih 5, section 2, of the food-product law. 



'•By order of the imperial chancellor: 



''Vox ROTTENBURG." 



In compliance with this mandate, instructions were issued by the royal ministries 

 of Prussia, Saxony, ^N'^iirtemberg, and Bavaria. The edict was officially published in 

 the organ of the imperial health department for July 25, 1894, and since that time all 

 evaporated apples offered for sale in Germany have been subject to the most careful 

 scrutiny. 



One of the tirst cases which came to trial under the.se regulations was that of two 

 grocers at Halle, named Baurmann and Werther, who were indicted before the royal 

 civil court of that city for having sold American evaporated apples containing 0.096 

 per cent of malate of zinc. With them were also indicted and tried Xicolaus Haas 

 and Fr. Arnold Ritter, of Hamburg, the importers from whom the condemned goods 

 had been obtained, and who were therefore held as accessory to the crime. After a 

 fair and full trial, in which the chief health officer of Halle and the sworn chemical 

 expert of the court gave elaborate and precise testimony, the accused were all acquit- 

 ted and the costs of the suit assessed by judgment upon the treasury of the State. 

 The grounds upon which the court gave this judgment were, briefly, that according 

 to the expert evidence adduced, dried fruit containing the alleged proportion of 

 malate of acetate or zinc could not be considered dangerous to human health, since 

 doses of those salts four times greater than the utmost quantity which u person would 

 consume in a day from eating food prepared in the usual way from dried apples are 

 frequently prescribed in medical practice to the same patient during several successive 

 days without danger of any injurious result. In other words, although the apples 

 under consideration might contain, as charged, a small trace of salts of zinc, the 

 admixture was not sutficient to render them unwholesome, and therefore neither the 

 importers nor grocers who offered them for sale were amenable to penalty nor the 

 goods to seizure. 



PKOCEEDINGS AT FRANKFORT. 



In February of the present year a lot of 25 cases of evaporated apples were 

 imported from Rochester, X. Y., by Mr. Erwin Roelker, of this city, and sold to a 

 local grocer named Latscha. The latter, in order to avoid danger of arrest or can- 

 fiscation of his goods, took the precaution before offering them for sale, to submit a 

 sample for analysis to a private chemist of high authority, who found them to ct>n- 

 tain 0.018 X'er cent of malate of zinc. The apples were thereupon returned by Mr. 

 Latscha to the importer, who, not being satisfied with the result, sent a sealed sami»le 

 from the same box to the same chemist, without stating from what lot the sample 

 had been taken. The analysis of this second sample showed that it contained only 

 36.6 milligrams per kilometer, or 0.0036 per cent, of zinc, an admixture so minute as 

 to be hardly discernible by the most delicate process. 



^'r. Roelker thereupon applied formally by letter to the police authorities of 

 Frankfort to know whether an admixture of 0.018 per cent of salts of zinc — 

 which had been found by the first analysis above described — would be held sufficient 

 to render dried apples unwholesome and subject the goods to seizure or the seller to 

 prosecution. He received in reply an official statement that aa admixture of 0.018 

 per cent of salts of zinc exceeded the limit of safety, and that if fruit containing 

 that percentage were sold by him ho would be liable to prosecution. He then 

 appealed to the i)rovincial government of this department in a loug letter, citing, 

 12950—^^0. 48 -Id 



