CARMODY — FOOD ADULTERATION. 
201 
must correspondingly suffer in pocket, if not in health ; for you 
can readily understand that the profits of adulteration go to the 
actual adulterator. So far as I know there are only three forms 
of purely local adulteration practised extensively, viz. : — adul- 
teration of milk, rum, and vinegar. If you desire to know the 
extent and nature of the adulterants that are said to be used in 
these imported articles, I would recommend you to read the 
sensational paragraphs that appear in the newspapers from time 
to time. Food adulteration, and bacteriology, and more recently 
skeleton photography, have been as great a godsend to current 
literature in general, as a Director of Public Works and a 
General Manager of Railways are to the local press. Nothing 
could be easier for me than to follow in this beaten track, to 
play the role of alarmist, and to provide you with a literary 
feast composed of a description of the most gruesome dishes. I 
might invite you to an imaginary early coffee, and provide you 
at six in the morning with the following menu : — Bread, 
bleached with alum and guaranteed indigestible by a suitable 
addition of plaster of Paris ; Butter consisting of Oleomargarine 
and other greases ; J ams and J ellies made from turnips, 
seaweeds, glucose and gelatine and tinted with aniline dyes to 
any desired shade ; Honey made of glucose and molasses ; Tea 
made of exhausted leaves dipped in a solution of catechu gum 
and then dyed with Prussian Blue ; Coffee made from chicory or 
burnt corn ; Cocoa (if you prefer the imported mixture to the 
genuine native article) composed of starch and sugar and with 
not more than 10% of real Cocoa lest the fat in it should inter- 
fere with your digestion j Milk guaranteed to contain not less 
than 25% of dirty water, or (if tinned) possibly deprived of a 
large proportion of its natural fat ; Demerara crystals which 
consist of the detested Beet sugar disguised by aniline dyes. 
And to relieve you of any further anxiety 7 , I would give this 
additional guarantee that all the Butter, J am, J elly, Honey, and 
Milk consumed on the premises are warranted to contain 
Salicylic and Boric acids in such quantity that, if you should 
happen to die soon after, you are already partially embalmed. I 
m ight invite you to dinner in the evening, but I am afraid you 
"would not accept the invitation after your experiences of the 
morning, and I will not hurt your feelings with a description of 
the contents of the dinner table. I will read you instead an 
amusing satire on this subject from the pen of a German writer. 
“There were four flies and, as it happened, they were 
hungry one morning. The first joyfully alighted on a sausage of 
singularly appetizing appearance, and made a hearty meal ; but 
he speedily died of intestinal inflammation, for the sausage was 
dyed with aniline. The second fly breakfasted upon flour, and 
c 
