has arisen from the licentiousness of the press, and of the body of the professors in more than one university. There is to be found the original poison of the fallacious opinions, and on that subject a community of measures was most necessary. Of what benefit would it be that one government restrained the licentiousness of the press, if another should encourage or tolerate it? What would it avail that his office was taken from a Professor in Prussia, who, by abusing his influence, perverted the minds of the pupils, if he were permitted to entertain the expectation of being nominated to another university? It was necessary on that subject to fix a policy on uniform principles, and the Congress has done it by the most obvious and simple resolutions. It has secured the liberty of the press in such a manner as to conciliate the interests of science, freeing from all trammels every learned work, and all serious and grave researches, whilst newspapers and pamphlets must submit to a censure, that the people may not be corrupted by the poison of their falsehoods, and their inflammatory doctrines, nor the citizens disgraced by their calumnies and

their lies.

"As to the universities, we have not meddled with what makes them dear to Germany, with the liberty of scientific instruction, with the extent to which the studies may be carried, nor to their peculiar and differing modes of communicating knowledge; but they are subjected to a more strict inspection, and it has been judged that the best method of repressing the political and antireligious flights of the professors, was to announce to them the serious consequences which their false doctrines would draw upon them for the remainder of their lives. As to the pupils, the prohibitions before made have been renewed, and will be enforced, so as to hinder them from being any thing but what they ought to be, young men who are preparing themselves for a future pe riod of knowledge and activity."

ART. VIII-ACCUM ON ADULTERATIONS OF
FOOD.

1. A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and culinary Poisons, exhibiting the fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine, Spirituous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionary, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, Olive-oil, Pickles, and other Articles employed in domestic Economy; and Methods of detecting them. By Frederick Accum, Operative Chemist, &c. London, 1820.

2. Practical Observations on the Nature and Treatment of Marasmus, and those Disorders allied to it, which may be strictly denominated bilious. By Joseph Ayre, M.D. Member of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, &c. 8vo. London. 1818.

THE former of the above works appeared only a short time ago, and has attracted much of the public attention. Our reason for annexing the title of the latter, will appear in the course of the present article.

Mr. Accum seems determined that even the outside of his book shall awaken our fears. The cover of our copy bears a death's head emblazoned upon a pall, and, underneath, the motto "there is death in the pot.' The pall is supported by the point of a dart. Four other darts support the four corners of the device. Twelve serpents, with forked tongues and tails entwined, form a terrific wreath around; while the middle is occupied with a large cobweb, delineated with much attention to detail, in the centre of which a spider, full as large as a moderate-sized hazel nut, and so frightful that more than one young lady of our acquaintance would think it necessary to scream at the sight of it, holds in its envenomed fangs an illfated fly, which is sinking under the loss of blood, and buzzing in the agonies of death.

We are by no means desirous to raise or maintain a popular clamour; but Mr. Accum certainly advances some weighty charges, and his work comes with an advantage in bearing a name not unknown to the scientific world. Of the adulterations specified, some are deleterious, and others merely fraudulent. It appears from the dedication, that the work originated in a suggestion of his grace the Duke of Northumberland, while cultivating the study of experimental chemistry in Mr. Accum's laboratory.

Quotations from Mr. Accum's book have appeared in the public prints; indeed a great part of the work itself is drawn from previous documents. But until the knowledge of the evil leads to some effectual efforts for its removal, we do not think that because much of the information which he thus affords is old, it therefore is not to be repeated. Accordingly, we shall offer a few extracts, both from the original matter of Mr. Accum, and from his citations drawn from previous authors.

Among the number of substances used in domestic economy which are now very generally found sophisticated, may be distinguished, tea, coffee, bread, beer, wine, spirituous liquors, salad oil, pepper, vinegar, mustard, cream, and other articles of subsistence. Indeed it would be difficult to mention a single article of food which

is not to be met with in an adulterated state. And there are some substances which are scarcely ever to be procured genuine." (P. 3.)

But we pass on from the general statements at the beginning of the work to particulars.

Water, by standing in leaden reservoirs, acquires a highly deleterious property.

"The white line which may be seen at the surface of the water preserved in leaden cisterns, where the metal touches the water and where the air is admitted, is a carbonate of lead, formed at the expense of the metal. This substance, when taken into the stomach, is highly deleterious to health." (P. 75, 76.)

In some particular cases, the consequences have been most fatal.

"A gentleman was the father of a numerous offspring, having had one and twenty children, of whom eight died young, and thirteen survived their parents. During their infancy, and indeed until they had quitted the place of their usual residence, they were all remarkably unhealthy, being particularly subject to disorders of the stomach and bowels. The father, during many years, was paralytic; the mother, for a long time was subject to colics and bilious obstructions.' (P. 78, 79.)

These effects were traced to a leaden pump, in the cylinder of which there were found several perforations, while the cistern 66 was reduced to the thinness of common brown paper, and was full of holes like a sieve." (P. 79.)

The following experiment shows the action of water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, as a test of lead contained

in water.

No

"Pour into a wine-glass, containing distilled water, an equal quantity of water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen gas. change will take place. But if a quarter of a grain of acetate of lead (sugar of lead of commerce) or any other preparation of lead be added, the mixture will instantly turn brown and dark-coloured." (P. 78.) "It is absolutely essential that the water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, when employed as a test for detecting very minute quantities of lead, be fresh prepared." (P. 94.)

We now come to the adulteration of wine; to many of our readers, probably, a far more interesting concern than that of

water.

قم

"All persons moderately conversant with the subject are aware, that a portion of alum is added to young and meagre red wines, for the purpose of brightening their colour; that Brazil-wood, or the husks of elderberries and bilberries,* are employed to impart a deep rich

1 * "Dried bilberries are imported from Germany, under the fallacious name of berry-dye."

purple tint to red port of a pale, faint colour; that gypsum is used to render cloudy white wines transparent; that an additional astringency is imparted to immature red wines by means of oak-wood saw-dust,* and the husks of filberts, and that a mixture of spoiled foreign and home-made wines is converted into the wretched compound frequently sold in this town by the name of genuine old Port..... A nutty flavour is produced by bitter almonds; ficticious l'ort wine is flavoured with a tincture drawn from the seeds of raisins, and the ingredients employed to form the bouquet of high-flavoured wines, are sweet briar, oris-root, clary, cherry-laurel-water, and elder-flowers. The flavouring ingredients used by manufacturers, may all be purchased by those dealers in wine who are initiated in the mysteries of the trade. And even a manuscript receipt-book for preparing them, and the whole mystery of managing all sorts of wines, may be obtained on payment of a considerable fee." (P. 95-97.)

"The particular and separate department in this factitious winetrade, called crusting, consists in lining the interior surface of empty wine-bottles, in part, with a red crust of super-tartrate of potash, by suffering a saturated, hot solution of this salt, coloured with a decoction of Brazil-wood, to chrystallize within them." (P. 101, 102.)

But the crusting is not confined to the bottle.

"A correspondent operation is performed on the wooden cask; the whole interior of which is stained artificially with a chrystalline crust of super-tartrate of potash, artfully affixed in a manner precisely similar to that before stated. Thus the wine-merchant, after bottling off a pipe of wine, is enabled to impose on the understanding of his customers, by taking to pieces the cask, and exhibiting the beautiful dark-coloured and fine chrystalline crust, as an indubitable proof of the age of the wine; a practice by no means uncommon to flatter the vanity of those who pride themselves in their acute discrimination of wines." (P. 103, 104.)

This our readers will excuse, for it is pleasing to read of impositions which are practised on the sagacious. But, says Mr. Accum,

"Several well-authenticated facts have convinced me, that the adulteration of wine with substances deleterious to health, is certainly practised oftener than is, perhaps, suspected." (P. 104, 105.)

Presently follows the story of the passengers by the coach, who dined at Newark. Half a bottle of port made them all ill, one dangerously. Part of the other half caused the death of an inhabitant of the place, on whom an inquest was held, and a verdict returned, of-Died by poison.

"The most dangerous adulteration of wine is by some preparations "Saw-dust for this purpose chiefly supplied by the ship-builders, and forms a regular article of commerce of the brewer's druggists,”

of lead, which possess the property of stopping the progress of acescence of wine, and also of rendering white wines, when muddy, transparent. I have good reason to state that lead is certainly em ployed for this purpose. The effect is very rapid; and there appears to be no other method known of rapidly recovering ropy wines. Wine merchants persuade themselves that the minute quantity of lead em ployed for that purpose is perfectly harmless, and that no atom of lead remains in the wine. Chemical analysis proves the contrary: and the practice of clarifying spoiled white wines by means of lead, must be pronounced as highly deleterious. Lead, in whatever state it be taken into the stomach, occasions terrible diseases. And wine, adulterated with the minutest quantity of it, becomes a slow poison." (P. 107, 108.)

But it most excites our choler to find that books have actually been printed and published, teaching in plain terms the methods of effecting these pernicious adulterations, or similar ones. The titles of several such books appear in the work before us: for instance, Graham's Treatise on Wine-making; The Vintner's Guide; Child on Brewing; and Shannon on Brewing and Dis tilling: to say nothing of books of cookery, full of mischief and disease. From the first of these works the following directions are taken.

"To hinder wine from turning.-Put a pound of melted lead in fair water into your cask, pretty warm, and stop it close.'"

To soften grey wine.-Put in a little vinegar wherein litharge has been well steeped, and boil some honey to draw out the wax. Strain it through a cloth, and put a quart of it into a tierce of wine, and this will mend it." " (P. 110.) So also the Vintner's Guide directs to add to a tierce of muddy wine, a lump of sugar of lead of the size of a walnut.' (P. 109.)

A gentleman having been taken severely ill on two successive days, after drinking each day a pint of Madeira from the same bottle, his apothecary ordered that it should be examined.

"The bottle happening to slip out of the hand of the servant, disclosed a row of shot wedged fercibly into the angular bent-up circumference of it. On examining the beads of shot, they crumbled into dust, the outer crust (defended by a coat of black lead with which the shot is glazed) being alone left unacted on, whilst the remainder of the metal was dissolved. The wine, therefore, had become contaminated with lead and arsenic, the shot being a compound of these metals, which no doubt had produced the mischief." (P. 113, 114)

For detecting the presence of lead or any other deleterious metal in wine, Mr. Accum recommends the wine test.

"It consists of water saturated with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, acidulated with muriatic acid. By adding one part of it to two of