flour and other things, such a purchase could not be to the prejudice of the purchaser. The point, however, was left undecided; the question again came before the Court of Queen's Bench, in the case of Sandys v. Small, and the "prejudice" question was argued on both points. Whisky was alleged to have been mixed with water, and the defence set up-that it was known to be so mixed, and therefore not to the prejudice of the purchaser-was held by the court to be good, and the case having been decided upon this point, the other was not proceeded with. Finally, the question was settled by the case of Hoyle v. Hitchman, March 27, 1879. The facts in this instance were of the simplest character: the appellant had purchased milk in the usual official way; the milk was found to be adulterated, and the defence was that, as he did not use the milk, therefore he did not buy the milk for his own use; he was not prejudiced. The magistrate who heard the case considered the defence good, and dismissed the summons.

Justice Mellor, in giving judgment, observed that the "prejudice" view of the Act "would absolutely nullify its beneficial effect. For if the meaning of the enactment is that the offence cannot be complete without its being 'to the prejudice of the purchaser,' it is hardly possible that the offence should be brought home to any one. And this observation, in my view, goes far to show that this construction cannot be the right one. So far as authority is concerned, there is no direct decision in favour of such a view; and indeed, in the English courts there is hardly any authority upon the point. For in the first of the two cases in this court referred to, the mustard case, my brother Lush distinctly said that, in his view, if the article were adulterated, it must be presumed that it was 'to the prejudice of the purchaser,' and I could not have dissented from that opinion, or I could not have concurred in sending the case down to be re-stated on the other point. And as to the other case, no doubt in the course of the argument the Lord Chief-Justice made some such remark, but not by way of a decided dictum, and rather by way of query or suggestion, and the decision went upon the other point, so that there is no authority in the English courts in favour of the view now presented. It cannot be said that the weight of judicial authority is against, and I rather think it is in favour of, the view which we have arrived at after the best consideration given to the question, as to the true construction of the enactment. It is quite general in its terms, and its terms are very large, nor is there anything to limit them,-'if any one shall sell, to the prejudice of the purchaser, any article of food not of the nature, substance, or quality of the article demanded by the purchaser.'

There is nothing to limit the application of the enactment (as some of the Scotch judges seem to have supposed) to articles deleterious in their nature. And in several of the sections (13 to 17) provisions are made for purchases by public officers for the purpose of analysis and prosecution, assuming that if the article is found to be adulterated, the offence will have been committed. It would be strange indeed if all these provisions were to be made nugatory by a construction which would, in effect, come to thisthat proceedings could only be taken by private individuals. Here the purchase was made by the inspector under those sections; but surely the case must be treated as though the purchase had been by a private individual. Now, in the case of a private individual no one could dispute that in such a case as this the offence would have been completed, and the magistrate has so found, in fact. That being so, what difference can it make as to the nature of the offence, that the purchase was by an officer on behalf of the public, and furnished with public money for the purpose? If the purchaser asks for a certain article, and gets an article which by reason of some admixture of a foreign article is not of the nature or quality of the article he asks for, he is necessarily prejudiced;' and how can the fact that the purchase is not with his own money at all affect the question of the commission of the offence? The offence intended to be prevented by the Act was the fraudulent sale of articles adulterated by the admixture of foreign substances, which would necessarily be to the prejudice of the purchaser;' and those words were inserted only to require that such an adulteration should be shown to have been made. Taking all these matters into consideration, I cannot bring my mind to the conclusion that in such a case as this the offence is less complete, merely because the money with which the purchase was made was not the money of the purchaser, which must be wholly immaterial to the seller, and cannot affect the offence he has committed. I come, therefore, to the conclusion that the magistrate was wrong in dismissing the case on that ground, and, therefore, that the case must be remitted to him to be determined on the evidence as to the offence alleged to have been committed."

Mr. Justice Lush, in expressing his entire concurrence, said that the differences of opinion which unfortunately prevailed as to the true construction of the sixth section of the Act had crippled the operation of a most beneficial Act.-Judgment for the appellant.

Finally, the Act of 1875 was amended by the "Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1879," which became law on July 21st in that year. This Act settled the "prejudice" question, authorised the

obtaining of samples of milk for the purposes of analysis, and established standards for spirits. (See sections on the "Existing Law relative to Adulteration.")

V. THE HISTORY OF THE PRESENT SCIENTIFIC PROCESSES FOR THE DETECTION OF ADULTERATION.

§ 27. If an attempt were made to write the full history of the modern system of the practical assaying of foods, beverages, and drugs, the result would be neither more nor less than a history of the development of the chemical, physical, botanical, and medical sciences; for there has scarcely been a single advance in any one of those sciences which has not some bearing, immediate or remote, on our subject. Hence, the more useful and less ambitious method to pursue will be merely to notice the chief writings and the more noteworthy discoveries of those who have explored this special field of investigation.

The very early and brief notices in the old writers have been already mentioned. The first general works on adulteration were devoted to drugs rather than to foods, and the herbals and the older works contain here and there, scattered through their prolix pages, casual mention of substitutions or falsifications. For example, Saladin of Ascala, a physician to the Grand Constable of Naples, who wrote in the fifteenth century a work on the aromatic principles of drugs, describes methods of preserving food, and in speaking of the adulteration of manna with sugar and starch, cites the case of an apothecary who was fined heavily and deprived of his civil rights. *

§ 28. In the early part of the seventeenth century Bartoletus discovered by analysis milk-sugar (see chapter on "Milk"), and to this epoch belong also some observations and experiments of another Italian, San Francesco Redi† of Florence, published in 1660, on the amount of mineral substances in pepper, ginger, and

*This work, "Compendium Aromatarium," was published in Augsburg, 1481. There is no separate copy in the British Museum, but it will be found as the "Liber Saladini" in the beautiful folio edition of the Arabic physician (Yumanná ibn Massawáih), Joannis mesuae damasceni medico clarissimi opera, &c., de medicamentorum delectu, castigatione et usu, &c., &c., folio, Venice, 1623. The work is in the old dialogue style, consisting for the most part of question and answer. The books preceding the "Liber Saladini" also contain some observations on adulteration.

+Francesco Redi, 1626-1697; he was at once a poet, a chemist, and a physician.

black hellebore. He burnt 100lbs. of each and weighed the ash: black pepper yielded 5lbs. 2oz. 4drs. of ash, ginger 5lbs. 3oz. 2drs., while black hellebore burnt in the same quantity gave 4lbs. of ash. These ash percentages, as we know, are accurate. He treated the ash with water, and noticed that all the salts lixiviated, and had a peculiar and definite figure, which they kept, although they were often resolved and afterwards congealed. "If in one liquid you dissolve together two or three sorts of salts of different figure, when they congeal they all resume their ancient and proper figure." He gives examples of this among mineral salts, and further states that if vitriol of cyprus, rock alum, and nitre, be dissolved, on evaporation and crystallisation the different salts can be readily detected.*

He

§ 29. The Honourable Robert Boyle, whose numerous writings and discoveries are well known to all scientific men, may be said in a way to have written the first treatise the sole object of which was to make known a method of detecting adulterations. The title of his work is "Medicina Hydrostatica; or Hydrostatics applied to Materia Medica, showing how by the weight that divers bodies used in physic have in water, one may discover whether they be genuine or adulterated," 8vo., Lond. 1690. His method of determining specific gravity was similar to that now used. determined the specific gravity + of pure rock crystal, which he took as a standard, comparing the specific weight of various minerals with it. He showed that impure mercury sublimate, weighed in this manner, would be deficient, and that Roman vitriol mixed with alum might also be similarly detected. He observed that there were several forms of soluble salts in plants, but always some that were cubical. Boyle also determined the percentage of ash in about forty different vegetables, and the amount of soluble ash. Boyle's was not a work of general scope, for the most part confining itself to the recommendation of a particular although widely applicable method.

An early general work on the adulteration of drugs was that of J. B. Vanden Sande, who may be called the pioneer of

* Phil. Trans., 1693, p. 281.

+ I believe that the oldest tables of specific gravity extant are those in Lord Francis Bacon's "Historia Densis et Rari," fol., Lond., 1741. A cube of gold was taken as a standard, and cubes of other substances, of a size as exactly similar as possible, were made. He was conscious, however, of the want of complete accuracy.

"Les falsifications des médicaments dévoilées, ouvrage dans lequel on enseigne les moyens de découvrir les tromperies mises en usage pour falsifier les médicaments tant simples que composés, et où on établit des règles pour s'assurer de leur bonté, ouvrage non seulement utile aux médecins, chirurgiens, apothicaires, et droguistes, mais aussi aux malades." Par. J. B. Vanden Sande,

applied quantitative chemistry, for he not only described the mere external characteristics of various articles of the materia medica, but also made alcoholic and ethereal extracts, and determined the weight of the extracts thus obtained. He also, after the manner of his time, distilled the substances and obtained various products.

§ 30. The invention of the microscope, revealing the most intimate structure of animal and vegetable tissues, and the regular and mathematical forms of salts and minerals, gave a great impetus to all the sciences. Antony Van Leeuwenhoek (b. 1632, d. 1723) was the first who in any philosophic manner occupied himself with this instrument. Gifted with rare powers of observation and manipulative dexterity, he made his own microscopes, and prepared all objects with his own hands. His microscopes were what we should now call lenses. Each object, permanently mounted, had a separate microscope, which merely consisted of a small double convex lens let into a socket between two plates riveted together, and pierced with a small hole. The object was placed, if liquid, on a fine little plate of talc, which was then glued to a needle, or, if solid, was attached to the needle itself. There was a mechanical arrangement by which the needle could be depressed or raised, or placed in any position desired. None of his lenses were very powerful-he rather preferred clear definition; nor were they all of the same magnifying power, but varied according to the nature of the object. He possessed an incredible number of these instruments, and at his death bequeathed many of them to the Royal Society. He investigated daily during his long life all kinds of objects in the three kingdoms of nature, and made perhaps a greater number of discoveries as to minute structures than any other man in his time; indeed, there was scarcely a competitor, for the method was peculiarly his own. These discoveries did not attract so much attention in his day as they deserved, the reason probably being that scarcely any one possessed the suitable means of corroborating his researches. Leeuwenhoek seems to have been the first to discover the active principle of tea and coffee, and to describe the structure of the coffee berry. Speaking of coffee beans, he says: "I placed some of the beans in a proper chemical vessel over the fire, and observed that, in the roasting or burning them, a great quantity of oily substance and also of watery moisture was expelled. The Maître Apothicaire de Bruxelles, à la Haye, 1784. A well printed 8vo. of 430 pages. The same author wrote a "Lettre sur la sophistication des vins,” Amsterdam, and one or two other works.

The author believes that this is the first notice of the separation of caffeine by Leeuwenhoek.