Anonymous

“ We are always happy to meet with such true-hearted reformers as the enemies to fraud and villany. Detesting the impositions of every form and variety to which the simple inhabitants of this metropolis are daily made victims, our author in a tone of ardent indignation, and disdaining to mince his expressions at a crisis so full of peril, denounces in forcible language the scandalous practices of adulteration, from which no material of food or luxury seems to be exempted. ”

“ It really seems an anomaly in the pursuit and attainment of knowledge that a man should conceive it necessary to be able to judge whether his shoe or his cravat is made in a good and workman-like manner, but of that science which treats of himself, and with which his health, his life, and all his comforts are so intimately and seriously connected, he should be in the most abject state of ignorance, and, unhappily, not hesitate to avow that ignorance! ”

“ Indeed, to judge of the merits of a medical man is extremely difficult; and, when we see one man ordering away, with contempt, the medicine which another has thought a specific, and pursuing a totally different course, we are forced to conclude that education alone will not make a physician. Reputation is not unfrequently got without merit, for who is to judge? Accident, solely, both with the drug and the doctor, has often been the maker of their fame. ”

“ Thousands and thousands of the population of this blessedly gifted country in medical science, are killed by this disgraceful quackery of the drug-shop, and the iniquitous drug-jobbing of apothecaries. What murders, what numerous murders have those men to answer for by their careless and injudicious use of powerful medicines—calomel and opium! ”

“ No skill can prevent the effects of daily poisoning; and no man can prolong his life beyond a short standard, where every meal ought to have its counteracting medicine.
Devoted to disease by baker, brewer, grocer, wine-merchant, spirit-dealer, cheesemonger, pastry-cook, confectioner, &c. the physician is called to our assistance; but here again the pernicious system of fraud, as it has given the blow, steps in to defeat the remedy: even the physician’s prescription is adulterated! ”

“ The credulity and infatuation of the public in the consumption of the deadly draughts are truly astonishing, and are a verification of the sarcasm that were the vision of death to appear to the tippler in each glass of liquor that he puts to his lips, yet he would still persevere in habits which are inevitably destructive of health and comfort, and eventually productive of disease and death. ”

“ The man who would shudder at the idea of giving a dose of arsenic to a single individual sleeps soundly in his bed, though he knows that he administers as fatal, though a slower, poison to thousands every day. And such a man is the baker, the miller, the wine-merchant, the brewer, the publican, the druggist, the tea-dealer, and every dealer who adulterates an article of food. ”

“ What an age of intellect do we live in! Could our good old Druidical ancestors have supposed that their puny and degenerate offspring would be endowed with the extraordinary gift of being able to rejuvenize old worm-eaten nuts? Rare and sublime discovery! What, John, may we not next expect? Surely, we have reached the millenium of the march of intellect and the perfection of sophistication. ”

“ But, dismal as is the destruction of human life from this source, it is by no means equal to that occasioned by the effects of the nefarious traffic in the adulteration of the necessaries of life; the pernicious and destructive mixtures and combinations to which they are subject have produced greater ravages on health, and given a greater empire to death than the united scourges of famine and the sword in combination with the refinements of cookery and the increase of gastrophilism:—they occasion the loss of tens of thousands of human lives every year in the metropolis alone. ”

“ Does the murderer hesitate to deprive his fellow-creatures of life? They are presently wound up to a reckless sense of their crimes at the gin-shop.—Has the seducer tried all his arts in vain to despoil his unsuspecting victim of peace and innocence? The seductive liquor offers him an easy prey, and leaves his immolated victim polluted, disgraced, and lost to society. ”

“ Was there ever a more audacious piece of imposture attempted to be palmed upon the credulity of the most credulous of mortals, Mr. Bull and his progeny? But perhaps the philippics of this gaunt-looking “hygeist” against surgery and anatomy may produce some good. It is true that to a certain degree, those arts should be esteemed and cherished; but after the allowance of suitable consideration, they should fall into their proper rank, with wholesome restrictions. Both the arts are overrated in point of real utility. ”

“ Those ingenious gentry line the inside of the bottles they intend to fill with their compound called wine, by suffering a saturated hot solution of super-tartrate of potash, coloured red with a decoction of Brazil wood, to crystallize within them. Others of that honest fraternity, who dislike trouble, put a tea-spoon full of the powder of catechu into each bottle, and by this artifice soon produce a fine crusted appearance of “aged wine.” ”

“ Adulterated flour, on the contrary, soon falls down. That mixed with whiting, white clay, or the like materials, is the most adhesive, though it soon gives way; but if the adulteration be ground bones, gypsum, or plaster of paris, it almost immediately falls. Where there is the presence of much bran, the grasped specimen will soon crumble, and this fraud may, also, be discovered by the colour and feel. It may also be observed that genuine flour will retain the impression of even the grains of the skin longer than that which is adulterated, the latter soon throwing off the fine marks. ”

“ It is to be hoped that our government will be influenced by like motives and follow the glorious example of our neighbours. If they want precedent,—the great bugbear of improvement either in morals, politics, law, religion, or even common sense, in our error-ridden nation, history furnishes us with sufficient examples. But, while those methods and laws are being planned and prepared, let us, in the mean time, resort to the good old practices of correcting and punishing the jugglers of the present day. ”

“ The ripe taste which rum or brandy that has been long kept in oaken casks obtains, is imparted to new brandy and rum, by means of a spirituous tincture of raisin-stones and oak saw-dust. And the water distilled from cherry-laurel-leaves is frequently mixed with brandy and other spirituous liquors to impart to them the flavour of the cordial called Noyeau. Sugar of lead not unfrequently forms part of the flavouring ingredients of the retailers’ rums.
But the perfection of adulteration is in gin,—cheap gin—“the real comfort,”—patronized by the poor for its supposed genuineness! ”

“ It is to be wished that all journalists were disposed, in like manner, to denounce fraud and imposture.
“While there is so much prating and preaching about the morals of the people; while the increase of crime is grossly exaggerated, and the necessity of instruction is loudly talked about! when even the lotteries, which of late years did no harm at all, have been given up to the prevailing fashion of affected sanctity, it is quite preposterous that such filthy nuisances as the numerous gin-shops of London should not merely be tolerated, but sanctioned and encouraged by the legislature. ”

“ It has been well said that it is not easy to determine whether the fraud and impudence of the empiric or nostrum-monger, or the folly and credulity of the sufferer, are the greater. But the fact is that quacks and impostors of all kinds, whether medical or political, pædagoguecal or corporational, live and thrive on the infernal popish maxim, that ignorance is the mother of devotion, that is, in plainer phrase—of gullibility. ”

“ In the above detail of adulterations in the public brewery of this country, no personality is intended in the tone of reprehension assumed on the subject; the remarks are intended to be applied only to “the most worthless part of the trade, to such as disgrace the name of brewer, by sporting with the lives of their fellow creatures for lucre’s sake.” Those odious and detestable wretches deserve the severest castigations, and every member of the community should lend his hearty co-operation to their exposure and punishment. ”

“ In the restoration of health, the poor often try the efficacy of the wine vaults and the medical wisdom of the druggist, who flourishes greatly in low neighbourhoods, in the metropolis, and even in some large provincial towns. These men, whose solitary qualification for this honest mode of existence has been commonly an apprenticeship behind the counter, have often placed in imminent peril many a valuable life. ”

“ One has laughed at the whimsical description of the cheats in Humphrey Clinker, but it is too serious for a joke to see that, in almost every thing which we eat or drink, we are condemned to swallow swindling, if not poison—that all the items of metropolitan, and many of country, consumption are deteriorated, deprived of nutritious properties, or rendered obnoxious to humanity, by the vile arts and merciless sophistications of their sellers. ”

“ Bread to be good, should be made of wheat flour; but the adulteration trade in this prime article of human consumption display no less ingenuity in the art of fraud and deception than their rivals in iniquity do in the wine and spirit and beer sophistications: convictions are on record of bakers having used pulverised gypsum or plaster of Paris, whiting, slacked lime, chalk, finely powdered granite, pipe-clay, particularly the white Cornwall clay, the flour of garden peas and horse beans, potatoes, bone-ashes, alum, spirits of vitriol, ammonia, magnesia, &c. ”

“ Where it is suspected that tea is adulterated with the leaves of other shrubs, the fraud, if not discoverable by the appearance and fragrant odour of the article, may be detected by putting a grain and a half of blue vitriol into a cupful of the infusion, when, if it be genuine green tea, and set in a good light, it will appear of a fine light blue. If it be genuine bohea, it will turn to a deep blue, next to black; but when an adulteration has been made in either case, a variety of colours, as green, black, yellow, &c. ”

“ Were they all influenced by the same honest, bold, and disinterested motives as the ill-fated Accum, who has been offered a vindictive sacrifice on the altar of trading cupidity and fraud. Every honest man must allow that the expatriation of that gentleman is a disgrace to the country which he has adorned and benefited by his talents, and ought to be deplored as a loss to the real interests of science and humanity. ”

“ The foregoing statement of artist ingenuity displayed by the Messieurs “Crust,” must be allowed to be liberal treatment of poor Mr. John Bull, in comparison with the acts of their rivals in the noble art of sophistication, the gin-shop-keeper, the brewer, the publican, and the other “trading interests of the nation.” But it will be better treatment to furnish the old gentleman with a test or two to enable him to detect the frauds of his said good friends, Messieurs les Crust and their compatriots, the mealmen. ”

“ I thought you sold wine, and not poison!”
But the particular histories of the corruptions of wines and spirits will be more acceptable to those who are14 desirous of preserving their health and enjoying their existence comfortably, than quotation; for, were wine and spirit bibbers aware of the abominable and fraudulent processes of adulteration in use among wine and spirit dealers and gin-shop keepers, they would not only heartily join in the exclamation of the “poet of Nature,” “Oh! that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!” ”

“ But without having the presumption or impiety to compare himself with those benefactors of mankind, or to put his humble endeavours in competition with their godlike attempts, or to expect a similar result from them, it will be a great consolation to the Author of this book, when life is departing the frail tenement of his body, to reflect that he has brought “deeds of darkness to light,”—that he has been the humble means of unmasking to public view the frauds and villanies that are daily and hourly practised on the Public Health and Welfare ”

“ But among the frauds and impositions practised on the public, none are more odious and unprincipled, and, at the same time, more loudly call for the prompt and active interference of the Legislature, than the tricks and effrontery of impostors, quacks, and empirics in medicine, both regular and irregular. It cannot but have been the frequent subject of regret to every honest and reflecting person that this vile trade should receive a legal sanction and protection, which it most assuredly does by virtue of the stamp duty imposed on the villainous trash ”

“ A ready way of detecting aqua-fortis, or oil of vitriol, in spirits, is, by dropping into a glass of the suspected liquor, a bit of chalk about the size of a pea, when the liquid, if spurious, will become like milk, but, if genuine, the chalk will lie at the bottom.
The adulteration of brandy with British molasses or sugar spirit, is ascertained by rubbing a portion of the suspected liquor between the palms of the hands, when the spirit, as it evaporates, leaves the disagreeable flavour which is peculiar to all British spirits. ”

“ John Long, the celebrated curer of consumption, was a dauber in the miniature-line;—the once celebrated, and now warmly nestled and scoffing Doctors Brodum and Solomon were, by turns, porters either in a drug warehouse or Jew pedlars; the canting worm manufacturer in Long Acre was a staymaker and life-guardsman;—Yankee noodle do Whitlaw and Don celestial Graham filled the honourable posts of a day labourer and tom-fool to a strolling company of players;—and many of the by-gone mountebank vagabonds were cobblers, tailors, weavers, footmen, blacking-makers, cat’s-meat men, &c. ”

“ The confectionary-artist is not behind his compeers in trade in the honourable vocation of sophistication. There are few articles which owe their paternity to his handy-work, that partake wholly of the ingredients to which they bear resemblance in name and appearance: all, almost all, here is the work of “the black art.” ”