Am.  Jour.  Pharni. 
May,  1884. 
Tin  in  Canned  Foods. 
269 
or  years,  we  must  not  forget  the  aged  persons  and  albuminurics,  and 
individuals  the  subjects  of  various  kinds  of  hepatic  and  renal  disease, 
whose  lives  might  be  seriously  compromised  by  sucli  a  regimen.  The 
committee,  therefore,  believing  that  for  such  persons  the  daily  use  of 
salicylic  acid  would  be  highly  dangerous,  while  even  for  those  in  good 
health  there  is  no  proof  that  it  would  be  innocuous,  recommend  that  its 
present  prohibition  should  be  maintained. — Medical  limes  and  Gazette, 
Feb.  16,  1884  ;  Amer.  Jour.  Med.  Sciences,  April. 
TIN  IN  CANNED  FOODS.1 
By  Professor  Attfield,  F.R.S.,  Etc. 
From  time  to  time,  during  the  past  twelve  years,  paragraphs  have 
appeared  in  newspapers  and  other  periodicals  tending  in  effect  to  warn 
the  public  at  least  against  the  indiscriminate  use  of  canned  foods. 
And  whenever  there  has  been  any  foundation  in  fact  for  such  cautions, 
it  has  commonly  rested  on  the  alleged  presence  and  harmfnlness  of  tin 
in  the  food.  At  the  worst  the  amount  of  tin  present  has  been  absurdly 
small,  affording  an  opportunity  for  one  literary  representative  of  medi- 
cine to  state  that  before  a  man  could  be  seriously  affected  by  the  tin, 
even  if  it  occurred  in  the  form  of  a  compound  of  the  metal,  he  would 
have  to  consume  at  a  meal  ten  pounds  of  the  food  containing  the 
largest  amount  of  tin  ever  detected. 
But  the  greatest  proportions  of  tin  thus  referred  to  are,  according  to 
my  experiments,  far  beyond  those  ever  likely  to  be  actually  present 
in  the  food  itself  in  the  form  of  a  compound  of  tin ;  present,  that  is  to 
say,  on  account  of  the  action  of  the  fluids  or  juices  of  the  food  on  the 
tin  of  the  can.  Such  action  and  such  consequent  solution  of  the  tin, 
and  consequent  admixture  of  a  possibly  assimilable  compound  of  tin 
with  the  food,  in  my  opinion,  never  occurs  to  an  extent  which  in  rela- 
tion to  health  has  any  significance  whatever.  The  occurrence  of  tin, 
not  as  a  compound,  but  as  the  metal  itself,  is,  if  possible,  still  less 
important. 
During  the  last  fifteen  years  I  have  frequently  examined  canned 
foods,  not  only  with  respect  to  the  food  itself  as  food,  and  to  the  pro- 
cess of  canning,  but  with  regard  to  the  relation  of  the  food  to,  or  the 
influence  if  any  of  the  metal  of,  the  can  itself.    So  lately  as  within 
1  Read  at  an  Evening  Meeting  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society,  March 
5th,  ,1884. 
