CARMODY — FOOD ADULTERATION. 
199 
About two hundred years later we hear of lime, an import- 
ant article among the Romans, being adulterated with red lead ; 
and, in the first century of the Christian era, of opium being 
adulterated with gum and the milky juices of other plants ; 
Pliny writes of bread adulterated with earth, soft to the touch, 
sweet to the taste and obtained from a hill called Leucogee, near 
Naples; and again states that, not even the rich Roman 
millionaires, could buy the natural wines of h demo, for they 
were adulterated in the cellars. We hear also of the appoint^ 
ment in Athens of a special inspector to stop the adulteration of 
wine ; but whether the recorders were at rest, or adulterators 
ceased from troubling, nothing more is heard of them till about 
the 11th century, since which time they have been particularly 
active. An Act for the assize of bread was passed in the 4th 
year, of the reign of King John j bakers, brewers, pepperers and 
vintners were all looked after, and ale-tasters were appointed in 
the 15th century. The adulteration of wine was so extensively 
practised in England in the 16th and 17 th centuries, that 
Addison thus writes in the Tatler “ these subtle philosophers 
are daily employed in the transmutation of liquors, and by the 
powers of magical drugs and incantations raise under the streets 
of London the choicest products of the lulls and valleys ot 
France ; they squeeze Bordeaux out of the s oe, an raw 
champagne from an apple.” 
In France, from very early times (13th century) we find 
regulations for the general supervision and inspection of pio- 
visions, flour, bread, wine, butter and drugs, until finally in ISO-, 
Boards of Health were permanently established in Paris. Similai 
steps were taken in Germany ; but the punishments were usually 
more severe. 
With many of these punishments, the punishments of the pre- 
sent day compare favourably indeed. In Nurembourg, m 144 , 
a man was burnt with bis false saffron, and a yeai a er, wo 
men and a woman were buried alive there for the same o ence. n 
other parts of Germany, the bread adulterator was placed in a 
basket at the end of a long pole, and ducked repeatedly in a 
muddy pool. One wine adulterator was led out of the city, with 
hands bound and a rope round his neck; two others were 
branded and otherwise severely punished; a man and his wife 
were pilloried on the cask in which they sold sour wine sweetened 
with roasted pears, each being compelled to wear a necklace ot 
the pears. But this was mild as compared with the punishment 
inflicted in 1482 on a falsifier of wine at Biebnch. He was con- 
demned to drink six quarts of his own wine. It killed him. in 
France, in 1525, a bread adulterator was led from prison through 
