Volume 1

Professional anecdotes, or ana of medical literature.

Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Professional anecdotes, or ana of medical literature. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    or paralytic persons, exposed at the windows of the ground-floors, to receive the charity of the persons who were walking out of town for plea- sure. May not, then, the present rarer occur- ence of palsy, be ascribed to the medicinal effect of these supposed poisons] and, as to their intoxicating powers, if people will drink to excess, it matters little with what drugs intoxi- cation is produced. According to this author, there are, on an average, from eight to twelve grains of alum in a quartern loaf. As this is, in most families, the weekly allowance of each person, the con- sumption of little more than a grain of alum per day, does not seem likely to do much, if any, mischief to the constitution; and the whole outcry against the bakers for using this salt, is, in reality, “ much ado about nothing.” Indeed, Mr. Accum himself, although so alive to every thing that can be called a poison, con- siders the admixture of one bushel of mashed potatoes, along with five of wheat flour, to be the crying sin of the London bakers! Pickles are said to be sometimes greened by copper. Now, copper is not like lead, an insi- dious drug; the action of the former is violent, and the stomach immediately takes alarm at its presence in the system, and exerts its utmost efforts to eject the enemy. At the same time, VOL. i. u