508  How  Food  Preservatives  Affect  Health.  {AN0Vember,hi9™' 
enter  the  stomach."  (Bull,  ioo,  Ky.  Agr.  Exp.  Sta.,  p.  ioi.)  Ac- 
cording to  that,  and  it  is  from  the  highest  authority  of  thcopposi- 
tion,  the  better  a  preservative  preserves,  the  more  dangerous  it  is  to 
human  beings.  On  the  strength  of  this  assumption  they  fight  pre- 
servatives, call  them  poisons,  and  denounce  them  as  injurious  to 
health.  They  have  no  experimental  evidence  as  yet  of  the  truth  of 
such  a  claim,  but  are  trying  now  to  get  it.  The  theory,  in  their 
case,  preceded  their  experiments.  All  men  of  science  know  what 
this  means. 
I  wish  to  particularly  divert  your  attention  to  the  use  of  the  word 
"  ferment "  by  the  authority  I  have  quoted.  He  uses  the  word  in 
two  distinct  and  unlike  meanings.  On  this  blunder  he  draws  his 
conclusion.  The  ferment  of  decay  and  the  ferment  of  digestion  are 
related  to  each  other  just  as  much  as  the  sugar  of  lead  is  related  to 
the  sugar  or  milk,  or  the  oil  o  vitriol  is  related  to  the  oil  of  cotton- 
seed. Indeed,  the  difference  is  far  greater  in  the  ferment  case  than 
in  either  of  the;others.  Our  ignorant  fathers  confounded  the  living 
germs  of  putrefaction  with  the  chemical  substances  we  call  enzymes, 
just  as  they  confounded  sulphuric  acid  with  oils  and  acetate  o  lead 
with  sugars.  No  one  is  now  so  ignorant  as  to  reason  that  what  is 
true  or  oil  or  vitriol  must  be  true  of  oil  of  peanuts,  or  what  is  true 
o  sugar  oc  lead  must  be  true  of  sugar  of  milk.  The  State  and 
national  leaders  o"  the  opposition  to  modern  preservatives  do  not 
blush  over  confounding  ferments  with  enzymes  and  drawing  conclu- 
sions from  such  confusion.  They  would  think  a  country  rustic 
should  blush  for  his  ignorance  if  he  should  reason  that  because  oil 
is  an  excellent  application  for  the  hair,  he  should  proceed  on  the 
strength  of  such  logic  to  apply  oil  of  vitriol  to  his  hair.  They  talk 
glibly  of  paralyzing  the  ferments  of  digestion,  which  are  dead  chemi- 
cal substances,  because  they  may  be  permitted  to  speak  of  paralyz- 
ing living  germs.  They  do  not  hesitate  to  draw  the  conclusion 
that  this  paralyzing  (?)  of  enzymes,  unfounded  as  it  is,  is  proof  that 
our  bodies  are  injured,  i.  e.,  poisoned,  by  preservatives.  Let  us  test 
such  logic:  "  Hydrochloric  acid  will  paralyze  the  ferments  that 
create  decay.  Hydrochloric  acid  must,  then,  to  the  same  extent 
paralyze  pepsin,  the  ferment  that  produces  digestion.  The  very 
fact  that  hydrochloric  acid  preserves  food  from  decay  shows  that  it 
is  not  fit  to  enter  the  stomach."  Could  mortal  man  reason  worse 
than  this  ?    I  need  not  stop  to  tell  intelligent  pharmacists  that  if 
