Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    671/896 (page 205)
    adulteration were suppressed, but the Act broke down when it was applied to the case of mustard. At that time mustard was largely mixed with flour, and it was impossible to prove that flour is injurious to health. Another Act was therefore tried in 1872, but that Act also broke down in a prosecution of some Liver- pool trades-people for selling butter mixed with fat, because it was impossible to prove that the tradesman knew that fat had been put into the butter in order to increase its weight and bulk. Accordingly, in 1875, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act was passed, of which the most interesting provision is that, under a penalty of £20, no person shall sell to the prejudice of the purchaser any article of food or any drug which is not of the nature, substance, and quality demanded. The way that Act is worked is this. Every town and county appoints a public analyst, and his duty is for a small fixed fee to analyse any sample which is brought to him by a member of the public. But only in some of the large towns is anybody appointed for the purpose of going round the shops and trying to discover cases of adulteration. Unfortunately, too, the Act is not compulsory, and it has not been much adopted in Scotland. Indeed it has been said that individual analysts, like Mr Cameron in Ireland, and Mr Stodclart in England, do more work in a single year than has been done in the whole of Scotland since 1875. You will there- fore see that unless you yourselves take some interest in this matter, you are not likely to derive- much benefit from the Act. And your interest is very great. There is no article of food on the purity of which your children's health depends so much as milk, and there is no article of food which is so easily and so much adulterated. I will give you an instance of that. The inhabitants of Dundee are said to spend £50,000 a year on milk. In March 1881 the Police Commissioners of Dundee caused a number of samples to be analysed and a number of milk dealers to be prosecuted. The result was that in the course of a week the value of the milk supplied to Dundee increased 25 per cent. • and it is therefore clear that for want of a public analyst Dundee had been losing £12,500 per annum. I am glad to say that