The adulteration of food : conferences by the Institute of Chemistry on Monday and Tuesday, July 14th and 15th : food adulteration and analysis.

Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The adulteration of food : conferences by the Institute of Chemistry on Monday and Tuesday, July 14th and 15th : food adulteration and analysis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    443/460 (page 11)
    which are more or less poisonous, and which, if each compound were enumerated, would swell the total to a big figure. In like manner, although in the common foxglove (digitalis) there are several poisonous principles, yet they are so nearly allied that they may be all included under one head, and so on with other cases. Inorganic solid poisons . . . . . . .19 Liquids, more or less volatile, and many anaesthetic, such as ether, chloroform, methylene, benzene, alcohol, etc. . 18 Acids, both organic and inorganic . . . . .10 Alkaloids . . . , 51 Glucosides ......... 20 Organic anhydrides ....... 2 Complicated animal and vegetable poisons not yet fully classed ......... 26 Gases .......... 14 160 Proceeding in this way I get a total of 160 poisons, as about the number at present known to science ; but not more than 40 of these ever figure in the Registrar-General's reports as a cause of death, and over 60 are chemical rarities, not existing in ordinary commerce. Previous to the nineteenth century, more than 70 of these poisons were either unknown, or only known as vegetable extracts ; it is the glory of modern chemistry, to have separated from plants most of the active principles in a perfectly pure state, and to have shown that what was formerly considered simple is really complex. Take for example, opium ; it has been known as a narcotic from the earliest times; before 1803 no one ever imagined that it contained more than one active principle, but in 1803 Derosne separated from it morphine and narcotine, and at the present time no less than 21 definite principles, all having different physical, chemical and physiological properties, some, indeed, antagonistic, have been separated from this wonderful drug ; or take aconite, that has been from the most remote times, the favourite poison in India ; aconite, or the common monkshood, contains six alkaloids |