SPURIOUS CHEMICALS. 
323 
poly of it, and whatever portion is imported into this conn- 
try must pass through their hands. Hence its price is high, 
and its uses are rather restricted. Were the supply more 
abundant, and the cost price somewhat more moderate, the 
consumption would increase enormously, for there are 
several trades in which white gum Arabic would be used 
very largely, and with great advantage to the articles pro- 
duced, instead of various substitutes now in use, all of which 
are wanting either in the brilliancy of the gum, or in some 
other of its useful properties. Of this I have the direct tes- 
timony of manufacturers, especially in the silk trade. The 
employment of the purified gum will assuredly improve the 
products of several British manufactures of considerable 
importance. In other respects also the general introduction 
of this ariicle will be beneficial to English commerce. It 
will render us independent of the monopoly carried on by 
foreign merchants in Egypt; and it will give an increased 
value and importance to the produce of British possessions 
and colonies, such as East India, Australia, Cape of Good 
Hope, &c, by rendering the sorts of gum Arabic imported 
from those countries available for purposes to which they 
could never hitherto be applied. — Pharm Journ. 
ART. LXXVIIT. — SPURIOUS CHEMICALS. 
By Jacob Bell, Editor of the Pharmaceutical Journal. 
We have repeatedly had occasion to direct the attention 
of the readers of this Journal to the adulteration of drugs. 
It is now our duty to notice a system, which appears to 
have prevailed to a considerable extent, not. of adulteration, 
but of the wholesale substitution of comparatively worth- 
less compounds, for valuable and powerful medicinal 
