Although it is generally acknowledged that the representations of the ephemeral writer who lately excited so much public notice, were no less preposterous than the symbols which decorated his volume,^[576] yet it cannot be denied that a great part of our daily food, and a still greater portion of our luxuries, are the constant objects of fraudulent adulteration; and what reasonable hope can be entertained of any amendment, while the temptations remain so excessive, the detection so difficult, and the punishment so inadequate to the crime; or, above all, while the trouble and expense of prosecution continue to be so disproportioned to the injury sustained by an individual, as to prevent his seeking redress through the ordinary channels of the law? these observations, perhaps, apply with greater force to the adulteration of articles not subject to the revenue duties of excise or customs, such as bread, milk, &c. Against the substitution or sophistication of those whose sale enriches the treasury, we have numerous enactments, and were we to form our judgment from them alone, we should conclude that fraudulent adulterations were rather deprecated as offences against the revenue, than against the health of the citizen. It is, however, important to remark, that if the health of any person be impaired in consequence of the act of another, as by selling him bad wine, which injures the party’s health, an action (viz. a trespass on the case) will lie. 2 Espin N. P. 601; 1 Rolle Abr. 90.

The adulteration of bread^[577] is specially prohibited by several statutes; the 31 Geo. 2, c. 29, entitled “An act for the due making of bread, and to regulate the price and assize thereof, and to punish persons who shall adulterate meal, flour, or bread;” after reciting the^[578] 51 Hen. 3, and 8 Anne, c. 18, and making various regulations as to the assize, enacts that bread made for sale shall be of meal or flour, and that no alum, or preparation or mixture in which alum shall be an ingredient, or any other mixture or ingredient whatsoever (except only the genuine meal or flour which ought to be put therein, and common salt, pure water, eggs, milk, yeast, and barm, or such leaven as shall at any time be allowed to be put therein by the court or magistrates.) And that no person shall knowingly put into any corn, meal, or flour, which shall be ground, dressed, bolted, or manufactured for sale, any ingredient, mixture, or thing whatsoever, or shall knowingly sell any thing which shall not be real and genuine meal or flour of the grain the same shall import to be.^[579]

With respect to the manufacture of malt liquors, especially porter, it is wholly under the jurisdiction of the excise, and yet there is no article of diet which has so universally the credit of being adulterated, and that too with drugs of the most noxious quality; we have now lying before us “Minutes taken (in Session 1818) before the Committee of the House of Commons, to whom the petition of several inhabitants of London and its vicinity, complaining of the high price and inferior quality of Beer, was referred, to examine the matter thereof and report the same, with their observations thereupon, to the house.” Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 8 April, 1819. From this it very clearly appears that the illegal addition of various drugs is commonly practised in the breweries; but we are nevertheless inclined to believe that the more extensive and serious frauds of this description, are not carried on in the cauldrons of the brewer, but in the barrels of the publican.^[580]

The adulteration of milk has furnished another object of popular clamour, but we are inclined to believe that its dilution with water is the only fraud ever committed with respect to it. Chalk, if added, would be so easily detected, and would answer the intended purpose so clumsily, that we may very safely consider such a charge against the London milk-venders as entirely groundless.

In order to assay the quality of milk several different instruments have been proposed; Mr. Dicas, mathematical instrument maker in Liverpool, invented for this purpose an instrument which he termed a lactometer, and which ascertains the richness of milk from its specific gravity compared with water. Mr. Edmund Davy, of Cork, has lately made a very interesting application of the hydrometer,^[581] to ascertain the quality of skimmed milk; it appears that in Ireland, especially in its southern districts, skimmed milk forms an indispensable part of the subsistence of the lower orders, and it is stated that the sale of this article in the markets of Cork alone amounts to a thousand pounds per week; the necessity therefore of securing the public against the fraudulent adulteration of so important an article of diet, requires no comment; and it appears that a large proportion exposed for sale had been greatly diluted with water; and that for want of the means of detection, the fraud had been long practised with impunity, not only in Cork, but also in other parts of the country; an unsuccessful attempt had indeed been made to remedy the evil by the appointment of persons called tasters, who were empowered to inspect the milk-markets in Cork, and to detain such milk as they considered adulterated; the total incompetency however of these officers was soon discovered, and a committee of respectable farmers was formed, to devise, if possible, some means to prevent the commission of so serious a fraud; on this occasion Professor Davy was consulted, and he accordingly constructed the instrument to which we have alluded, and which differs only from the hydrometer in its scale; so completely has it answered the object of its construction that the milk now brought to market is very rarely found to have been watered.

We might now proceed to the consideration of various other articles which are pre-eminently the objects of fraudulent adulteration, but neither our time, nor space, will allow the digression; nor indeed should we have entered into the discussion, but to preserve the order and uniformity of our subject, and to shew its relations to chemical as well as medical inquiry. With respect to the adulteration of our medicinal articles, we have already pointed out (p. 20) the law by which the College of Physicians is empowered to search apothecaries’ shops, and to destroy such drugs as may be spoilt or adulterated; we have only in this place to repeat our desire that its jurisdiction may be enlarged. Very few practitioners have an idea of the alarming extent to which the nefarious practice of medicinal adulteration is carried, nor of the systematic manner in which it is conducted; and it would perhaps have been deemed a duty to have entered into a few details upon the subject, had not the author already published in his Pharmacologia (edit. 5th) an account of the various modes in which our remedies are thus deprived of their most valuable properties, and described the tests by which such frauds may be discovered.