AmMay?i906arm*}        Use  of  Preservatives  in  Foods.  223 
teriologist  to  prove  to  her  that  fruit  thoroughly  cooked  and  hermeti- 
cally sealed  will  keep  indefinitely.  Perhaps  the  most  perishable  food 
used  in  large  quantities  is  milk,  and  yet  it  is  a  fact  to-day  that  in  such 
a  large  centre  of  population  as  Philadelphia,  purer  milk  can  be  bought 
than  our  fathers  drank  on  the  farm.  Of  course  it  costs  to  transport 
milk  the  necessary  distance  and  have  it  arrive  in  good  condition 
without  the  use  of  preservatives;  but  this  is  beside  the  question,  for 
the  philanthropists  who  advocate  the  use  of  food-preservatives  lay 
no  stress  upon  the  money  which  they  save,  but  talk  only  of  the 
benefit  to  the  national  health. 
A  recent  writer  in  defending  the  use  of  preservatives  draws  a 
vivid  picture  of  the  disaster  to  health  from  eating  meat  that  because 
of  the  lack  of  pickle  has  reached  the  market  in  a  most  advanced 
stage  of  decomposition  yet  outwardly  retaining  sufficient  appearance 
of  wholesomeness  to  be  salable.  This  dramatic  conception,  painted 
sufficiently  lurid  to  spoil  our  appetite  for  all  unadulterated  pabulum, 
fades  into  insignificance,  however,  in  comparison  with  the  facts 
proven  by  C.  D.  Harrington,  of  Boston,  who  has  shown  that  by  the 
use  of  sodium  sulphite,  meat  containing  five  billion]  bacteria  per 
gramme  could  be  made  to  look  like  fresh  meat  and  the  odor  of  de- 
composition so  covered  up  that  an  ordinary  customer  might  be 
induced  to  buy  this  putrid  mixture  of  rotten  flesh  and  sodium 
sulphite  under  the  delusion  that  he  was  purchasing  food. 
Personally  I  am  not  certain  of  the  advisability  of  legislation  at 
the  present  time  prohibiting  the  use  of  all  food-preservatives,  but  I 
most  emphatically  do  believe  that  those  manufacturers  or  dealers 
who  use  food-preservatives  should  be  made  to  say  so.  If  I  am  going 
to  take  a  daily  dose  of  borax,  or  of  sodium  sulphite,  or  of  formalde- 
hyde, I  want  to  know  it,  and  I  believe  I  have  a  right  to  know  it. 
If  the  user  of  food-preservatives  is  convinced  that  my  system  needs 
borax  or  formaldehyde  let  him  show  me  in  what  way  they  will  benefit 
and  then  tell  me  the  amount  that  his  preparations  contain,  and  per- 
haps I  will  eat  them.  If  borax  and  salicylic  acid  have  a  wholesome 
effect  upon  the  economy  let  the  people  but  know  when  they  are 
using  these  antiseptics  and  they  will  soon  discover  for  themselves 
their  beneficent  properties. 
But  I  believe  there  is  little  room  for  doubt  but  that  the  continued 
reveling  in  chemical  fare  exercises  a  baneful  effect  upon  the  body. 
Certain  it  is  these  disinfectants  are  not  proven  harmless.    But  be 
