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ADULTERATION. 
ADULTERATION. Themixing ofcheap foreign 
substances with articles of food and medicine, in 
order that purchasers may be deceived, and large 
profits obtained. Many farmers, millers, provi- 
sion-dealers, bakers, dairymen, grocers, confec- 
tioners, and druggists, are very unscrupulous 
adulterators ; and, just because they traffic in the 
commodities which most nearly affect human 
health and life, they are incomparably guiltier in 
the sight of God than adulterators of any of the 
other classes of society. An adulterator of food 
is at best a robber of the poor, and a cheat in 
general society ; and, in most instances, he is also 
in some degree—occasionally in a very dreadful 
degree—a secret stabber at the life of his fellow- 
creatures,—an unsuspected, a well-disguised, and 
therefore an eminently guilty poisoner of his fel- 
low-men. 
Grain of inferior quality is sometimes mixed 
with superior; and the grain of the stock is often 
worse in itself, or less clean, than the grain of 
the market sample. The butter of the interior 
or lower part of a cask or other vessel, is some- 
times much inferior to that atthe top. The milk 
of town and city dairies, retailed to the families 
of citizens, is often diluted with water, and some- 
times abominably medicated with watery pre- 
parations of chalk. Ground pepper from the 
grocer can scarcely ever, if at all, be obtained 
genuine ; mustard often. contains a mixture of 
insipid substances ; and tea is not unfrequently 
a coarse mixture of home and foreign leaves. Most 
kinds of comfits, or articles of confectionary, very 
generally contain a mixture of gypsum, chalk, or 
other substances, very debilitating to the stomach, 
and fitted to form obstructions and concretions 
in the bowels. Ales, wines, and other stimulating 
drinks, very often as sold in retail, and frequently 
even as sold in wholesale, contain a large propor- 
tion of very deleterious and even directly poison- 
ous ingredients. Drugs—though they ought 
above all things to be genuine and of the best 
qualities, and though adulterations of them al- 
most necessarily defeat all medical prescription, 
and occasion slight attacks of disease to be mor- 
tal—are, as a class of substances, probably more 
adulterated than any other ; and not. only are 
feeble and worthless mixtures sold in name and 
stead of active compound medicines, but vile 
manufactured imitations are vended in lieu of 
powders, gums, and other simple substances. 
The rascality which carries on adulteration in all 
these departments, and in hundreds of others— 
which, in fact, keeps up a laboratory of evil at 
almost every source of supply for the public mar- 
kets, for the shops, or for the daily wants of man 
—is far too extensive in its range, and too subtle 
in its operations, to be investigated and exposed 
within our narrow limits, All we can do is to 
exhort farmers, by the highest consideration, to 
keep themselves uncontaminated by so great a 
wickedness, and to warn them against being im- 
posed upon in making their own purchases for 
45 
the family and the farm. Two important matters j 
in which they incur some risk of being made vic- 
tims, are those of doctored seeds, and of worth- 
less imitations of guano; and these, as well as 
some other matters, will be noticed under the 
words Srnps and Guano, and in some other ar- 
ticles. One exceedingly important matter, con- 
nected with farm-produce, in which the public 
are extensively victimized, is the adulteration of 
flour ; and this we shall here briefly notice, both 
on its own account, and for the sake of giving a 
specimen exposure of adulterations in general. 
“Tt has been found so difficult,” says Mr. Bab- 
bage, “to detect the adulteration of flour, and to 
measure its good qualities, that, contrary to the 
maxim that government can generally purchase 
any article at a cheaper rate than that at which 
they can manufacture it, it has been considered 
more economical to build extensive flour-mills, 
and to grind their own corn, than to verify each 
sack purchased, and to employ persons in con- 
tinually devising methods of detecting the new 
stone 
modes of adulteration which might be resorted | 
to.” A mixture of gypsum or of ground bones 
with flour is not a little noxious, but, if in consid- 
erable quantity, may be detected by the dispro- 
portion of the bulk of the flour to its weight, and 
if in only small quantity, may be detected by 
their incombustion, or remaining as white heavy 
powder, when a little of the flour is burned. 
The mixture of potato-starch, and of bean-flour 
and pea-flour, with white-flour is very extensively 
practised ; and, though quite unlike the poison- 
ing kinds of adulteration, it deteriorates quality, 
diminishes amount of nourishment, acts directly 
as a fraud, and is therefore essentially wicked. 
If a vessel which contains exactly one pound of 
pure wheat-flour, have put into it a compound of 
a mixture of wheat-flour and potato-starch, it will 
be found unfilled to nearly the quantity of potato- 
starch employed ; or, rather, a vessel which con- 
tains exactly one pound of pure wheat-flour, will 
contain 1} pound of potato-starch, or 14 pound 
of equal parts of flour and starch. A few drops 
of nitric acid will change the colour of wheat- 
flour into a fine orange yellow, but does not alter 
the colour of potato-starch. Strong hydrochloric 
or muriatic acid changes the colour of wheat- 
flour into a deep violet, but reduces potato-starch 
into the condition of a liquid. Wheat-flour ab- 
sorbs a greater proportion of water than potato- 
starch ; so that a comparison of the quantity of 
water taken up by a genuine specimen of flour, 
and a potato-adulterated one, will show their 
character, and indicate the proportion of starch 
employed. When boiling water is poured upon 
a mixture of wheat-flour with the flour of either 
beans or pease, the presence of the latter is in- 
stantly announced by the smell of beans or pease 
in the vapour. A little of the solution of gum 
guaicum in water, if poured upon pure wheat- 
flour, will change its colour into blue, but will be 
resisted in its colouring action by most foreign 
