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THE VETERINARIAN, DECEMBER 1, 1855. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. 
Cicero. 
ADULTERATION OF FOOD AND DRUGS. 
Our readers are doubtless aware that during the last 
session of parliament a Committee was appointed to inquire 
into the adulterations of food and drugs. 
We have thought that a condensation of the evidence* 
under the last head* might prove of some service to the 
profession* by making them acquainted with the sophistica- 
tions carried on; thus putting them on their guard* and 
enabling them to avoid disappointment arising from the 
difference in the action of medicinal substances ; since this is 
too often the case* when the odium is always cast on the 
administrator or prescriber, and not on the agent employed. 
With the question — Who were the originators of this in- 
vestigation ? we have little to do. Some of our readers may 
perhaps remember Accum’s work* entitled “ Death in the 
Pot,” wherein it was shown by him that our daily food was 
then highly adulterated ; for trickery did at all times exist 
in trade* and always will ; although we might have thought 
that our food* and the agents by which health is restored* 
would at any rate have escaped — that self-interest would 
have been sufficiently strong to resist their adulteration ; 
but the opposite is the fact. Hudibras has said that 
“ the pleasure is as great 
In being cheated as to cheat.” 
And one is half inclined to believe it is so from the love of 
cheapness that prevails* and the close competition that exists 
at the present day. 
It would appear that with Mr. Wakley, in a series of 
reports published in the Lancet * in 1851 * the present move- 
ment began ; but the statements are somewhat contradictory 
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