October 1, 1870.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
271 
detection and punishment followed, we should find that 
the sellers would think twice before they offered such 
articles. It is strange that, in all our sanitary machinery, 
the food question and its purity have been so overlooked; 
hut pure food is as necessary as pure air, good drainage, 
or wholesome water; and it ought not to be left to the 
philanthropist to remedy the evil, with the tolerable cer¬ 
tainty that he will only get snubbed for his pains. It is 
a Government question, and it ought not to he the duty 
of a private member of the House of Commons to bring 
in a Bill. "With a view to arouse public interest he had 
established the Food Journal , in conjunction with Messrs. 
Johnson, feeling that there was a great want of some 
public organ to discuss these matters; and so convinced 
was he that no Bill could properly be passed without the 
knowledge of the legislation which prevailed in other 
countries, that he applied to the late Earl of Clarendon 
for permission to address the various consuls on the sub¬ 
ject. His lordship not only gave the permission, but 
evinced his great interest in the matter by requesting 
him to draw up a circular, embodying all the inquiries 
on food matters that he wished to make. A thousand of 
these were sent out by the Foreign Office to all the Con¬ 
sulates and Legations; and Earl Granville, who has 
taken up the subject in the same warm and earnest spirit 
as evinced by his predecessor, has forwarded for publica¬ 
tion in the Food Journal a mass of valuable information, 
which has never before reached this country. To detail 
even an epitome of these answers would take up far too 
much of the time of the meeting. He would, therefore, 
only briefly touch on some of the main points of the first 
question of the circular, viz.:— £ What legislative enact¬ 
ments at present exist in the country to which you are 
accredited respecting the adulteration of food and drink ? 
Are these laws actively enforced, and how far do they 
appear to meet the evil?’ Very valuable information 
came to us from the United States, in Mr. Thornton’s 
report, which adverts to the difficulty of getting sys¬ 
tematic information, even through the well-arranged 
machinery of official correspondence. The State legisla¬ 
tion varies very much in the different States, some pos¬ 
sessing no legislation at all, and others inflicting very 
severe penalties. Each State legislates independently, 
and, in so doing, often delegates the regulation of these 
matters to the various town or county authorities within 
its borders. As a general rule, the adulteration of 
alcoholic liquor is almost universal. The paper then 
sketched the punishments meted out to those who adul¬ 
terate food and drink in Rhode Island, Vermont, 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, Cincinnati, 
Georgia, and Texas, as well as in Prussia and Holland. 
It showed that severe fines and long periods of imprison¬ 
ment are commonly enforced, and that there are places 
in which the penalties are whipping, and even death, if 
fatal results ensue. In Holland punishment is also pro¬ 
vided for persons who manufacture or sell ingredients 
for adulteration; so that the flourishing business known 
in England as that of a brewer’s or distillers’ druggist 
must be there pursued under considerable disadvantage. 
It proceeded:—“Any fresh legislation on this subject 
should be compulsory in its character, and not permis¬ 
sive. All articles of consumption which are manu¬ 
factured should have their ingredients declared, for there 
is a feeling prevalent among manufacturers, as for in¬ 
stance cocoa-makers, that as long as their articles con¬ 
tain nothing hurtful, they are at liberty to call them by 
the general name of cocoa. Still, a sophistication is, to 
a certain extent, a fraud, and every purchaser has a right 
to know what he is purchasing; and, although we might 
bo safe in the hands of the largest and most respectable 
manufacturers, there is a considerable class of unprin¬ 
cipled makers who are not above taking advantage.” 
Differences of opinion sometimes occur as to the relative 
hurtfulness of certain common adulterants, and an emi¬ 
nent authority had assured him that he had grave doubts 
as to whether alum was not a good thing instead of a 
bad one. He suggested that there should be a Food Sub¬ 
department formed, which should take cognizance of all 
food legislation and supplies. To it a board of two or 
three of the most eminent analytical chemists should be 
attached, who should examine and pronounce upon all 
disputed chemical questions, and whose opinion should 
be law. The sub-department should have the election 
of, and a certain amount of control over the county and 
borough analysts, whose appointment should be com¬ 
pulsory and not permissive; neither should it rest with 
vestries or corporations, many of the members of which 
are often largely concerned in adulteration. Inspectors 
should have power to visit and take samples from all 
dealers in articles of food, subject to certain checks, so 
as to prevent any risk of tyrannical domiciliary visits. 
They should also have the power of testing the supplies 
furnished to public bodies, such as union contracts, for 
guardians have frequently a habit of accepting tenders 
for food at a price at which the real article cannot pos¬ 
sibly be supplied, as a London Union Board did the 
other day in the case of butter. In cases where a petty 
dealer declares his ignorance that the goods which he 
sells are adulterated he would make the onus of proving 
this fall upon him, and then it would be for the Food 
Sub-department to take the matter up and prosecute the 
manufacturer. In adulteration before importation, as 
in the case of the Maloo tea mixture, the department 
might well provide the machinery for setting consular 
and other influence to work to prevent it, and might also 
step in as the proper arbiter between conflicting interests. 
In this very case a great fraud on the public was allowed 
to go unpunished because the Customs could not legally 
forego the duty. As to offences, when proved, he was 
no believer in either a very small or a very large fine, 
but he would have no sliding scale at the option of the 
magistrate. For the first offence the penalty should be 
sufficient to make the offender smart in his pocket; for 
the second, he would double it, and have an afficlie detail¬ 
ing the offence put outside his door, as also outside the 
door of the church, police-station and town-hall for a 
month. The case should also be advertised in the local 
papers at the offender’s expense. For the third offence 
there should be imprisonment for one month, with hard 
labour. Adulteration is either a fraud or it is not, and 
it should be punished like any other cheating. 
An interesting debate followed, in which Mr. Rawlin- 
son, Mr. Godwin, Mr. Serjeant Cox, Dr. Fare, and 
other gentlemen took part. The facts and arguments 
brought forward by Mr. Sevan were generally admitted 
and assented to, and resolutions wore passed recommend¬ 
ing local authorities to appoint analysts, whose duty it 
should be to examine food and drink at the instance of 
purchasers, and recommending the Council to take steps 
to secure an amendment of the law. 
A paper was afterwards read by Mr. Daglish on 
“ Local Boards of Health,” and one by the Rev. H. Moule 
on “ Earth Closets.” 
On Saturday the members of the Association assembled 
in the morning to hear an address from Dr. Lyon Play¬ 
fair’, the President of the Education Department. He 
expressed his opinion that with all its defects the Act of 
last session is an enormous stride in advance of the old 
system of contributory help under which schools multi¬ 
plied but education slipped backwards. He complained, 
however, that it dealt with the quantity of education, hut 
not with its quality. The improvement which was gra¬ 
dually being developed in the village schools had been 
thrown back by the State, which had made them mecha¬ 
nical manufactories, turning out no end of yards of the 
three R’s, in standards one, two, and three, but very few 
in standards four, five, and six, because the latter do not 
pay. Dr. Playfair proceeded: even in the least produc¬ 
tive of arts, that of war, a State is served by the universal 
education of her soldiers. The educational principle of 
Continental nations is to link on primary schools to se¬ 
condary improvement schools. The links are always 
