Deadly adulteration and slow poisoning, or, Disease and death in the pot and the bottle; in which the blood-empoisoning and life-destroying adulterations of wines, spirits, beer, bread, flour, tea, sugar, spices, cheesemongery, pastry, confectionary medicines, &c. &c. &c. are laid open to the public, with tests or methods for the ascertaining and detecting the fraudulent and deleterious adulterations and the good and bad qualities of those articles : with an exposé of medical empiricism and imposture, quacks and quackery, regular and irregular, legitimate and illegitimate: and the frauds and mal-practices of pawn-brokers and madhouse keepers / By an enemy of fraud and villainy.

Date:
[1829?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Deadly adulteration and slow poisoning, or, Disease and death in the pot and the bottle; in which the blood-empoisoning and life-destroying adulterations of wines, spirits, beer, bread, flour, tea, sugar, spices, cheesemongery, pastry, confectionary medicines, &c. &c. &c. are laid open to the public, with tests or methods for the ascertaining and detecting the fraudulent and deleterious adulterations and the good and bad qualities of those articles : with an exposé of medical empiricism and imposture, quacks and quackery, regular and irregular, legitimate and illegitimate: and the frauds and mal-practices of pawn-brokers and madhouse keepers / By an enemy of fraud and villainy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    have the illicit practices of poisonous adulteration ar- rived, “ that it would be difficult to mention a single article of food which is not to be met with in an adulte- rated state; and there are some substances which are scarcely ever to be procured genuine.” These spurious mixtures and counterfeit articles are combined and manufactured with so much skill and in- genuity, as to elude and baffle the discrimination of the most experienced judges. And, for the purpose of en- suring. the secrecy of the nefarious traffic, “ the pro- cesses are distributed and subdivided among distinct operators, and the manufactures are carried on in se- parate establishments.” The tasks of proportioning the ingredients and that of their composition and prepa- ration are assigned to distinct persons. In fact, “ the traffic in adulterated commodities finds its way through so many circuitous channels as to defy the most scru- tinizing endeavour of individual exertion to trace it to its source.” And the frequency of the act has ren- dered the conscience of the offenders callous and in- different to the consequences. 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. And yet, those thoughtlessly wicked men suffer their consciences