288 ADULTERATIONS OF ALIMENTARY SUBSTANCES. 
Salt has been mixed: — ] st, with crude plaster (plaster- 
stone reduced to powder,) and this adulteration was so 
great in Paris that an establishment was fitted up by a 
manufacturer for the pulverisation of this stone, which was 
afterwards sold in commerce under the name of powder to 
be mixed with salt; 2nd, with granite reduced to powder; 
3rd, with salts of varech and salts of every kind arising 
from various manufactures of chemical products. It must 
be remembered that, in 1827, an epidemic, which attacked 
more than 400 persons, was caused by culinary salt sold in 
the department of Marne. This salt was subjected to seve- 
ral experiments, and it was discovered that it contained 
iodides and arsenic. It was not known at first to what to 
attribute the presence of arsenic in this salt ; but it was 
learned some time afterwards that this salt had given rise 
to these accidents arising from a manufactory in which salts 
of varech were refined, destined to be mixed with refined 
common salt. Similar salt was sold in Paris, and rendered 
ill a family named Pymor. This salt caused swelling of 
the face, pains in the head, ardent thirst, inflammatio 
amygdalce of the a, and intolerable pains in the course of 
the stomach and intestines, followed by a diarrhceal flux, 
almost always sanguinolent. 
The mixture of salts arising from manufactures with ali- 
mentary salt, may present very great danger. The Presse 
of December 17, 1S43, states that, at the Hague, more than 
eighty persons were poisoned by using, for seasoning their 
food, salt procured from a manufactory at which it was sold 
for a very low price. Experiments demonstrated that this 
salt contained an arsenical preparation.* 
White salt has been mixed with salts of varech and with 
* A letter from M. Wrydag Zinem, pharmacien at the Hague, has since 
informed us that the salt sold at the Hague had been mixed with arsenic by 
the grocer's servant, with the object of driving away the customers from his 
master's shop in order that he might have the less work to do. 
