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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
OUR HEALTH.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
THE CHARR OF WINDERMERE.
SILAS MONK.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE HONEY-BEE.
BOOK GOSSIP.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
WILD-FLOWERS FROM ALLOWAY AND DOON.
No. 26.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1884.
OUR HEALTH.
BY DR ANDREW WILSON, F.R.S.E.
III. SOME FOOD-DANGERS, AND HOW TO AVOID THEM.
In connection with the subject of food and health,an important topic naturally intervenes in thecourse of such discussion, in the shape of therelation which impure foods bear to the productionof illness and disease. Pure air and purewater are required by natural and common consentas necessities of existence; but the purityof the food we consume is no less a paramountcondition of physical well-being. Food-impuritiesmay be ranked under diverse heads. Adulterationof foods is thus a common cause of illness.The food, rendered of poor quality, does not containthe necessary amount of nutritious material;or it may impart disease from its being impregnatedwith matters foreign to its composition, andwhich have been added thereto for purposes ofunfair trade-profit. For example, when one hearsof alum and sulphate of copper being added tobread, it is evident that a serious form of adulterationis thus practised; while equally reprehensiblemodes of procedure are known to be in voguewhen flour is treated so as to yield more than itslegitimate quantity of bread; when rice, potatoes,and other starchy matters are added to the breadin the course of manufacture; or when flour ofdamaged or inferior quality is used. Similarly,when milk is adulterated with water, treacle,turmeric, and so forth, a cause of ill-health isclearly discovered. If tea be ‘faced’ with black-lead,or with Prussian-blue, turmeric, and Chinaclay, there can be no question of the fraudulentand dangerous nature of such a practice; andwhen we read of preserved green peas beinglargely adulterated with sulphate of copper, andthat a one-pound tin of green peas has been foundto contain two and a half grains of this poisonouscompound, it becomes evident that legislationdirected against this worst of frauds—food-adulteration—isboth necessary and highly requisiteas an active feature of social law.
Into questions connected with the adu