Here is a most important problem the world must face, and it is particularly of importance to the people of the United States, because we here are all accustomed to boast that we live under a free government and can do pretty much as we individually choose to do. This helps to make the adulteration of foods very common in this country; and while a number of the States have enacted laws more or less strict to restrain the practice, the National Congress has as yet refused, or rather failed, to pass a greatly-needed pure-food law that shall apply to the nation at large. In this case State laws will not do, unless they be absolutely the same, word for word, and that is well-nigh impossible. The interested interests, instigated by the devil and all selfishness, can so manipulate State legislation as to make it practically ineffective as to the protection of the people. There is an enormous capital employed in food supplies, in their procurement, in their preparation, and in their adulteration; and just so long as this enormous capital can protect those engaged in the business, just so long will the people be cheated and gulled and poisoned. The proper remedy is a national pure-food law covering the conditions absolutely, and the sooner we get such a law the better it will be for our stomachs, our pockets, and our morals.

The higher we progress in civilization the better the opportunity for food adulteration. The savage knows nothing of such abominations. Hundreds of years ago France made some efforts to check adulteration, especially the adulteration of flour. Some effort was also made as to milk and wine and medicines. At this time Germany also commenced to be active on these lines.

About 1700 England became active in guarding tea and coffee. Roasted beans and peas and wheat were used as adulterants. In 1860 Dr. Hassall became active in combating food adulteration in England, and Germany and France also took up the matter seriously. Of course in foods the adulterations may be harmless as to health and fraudulent as to the pocket. Again, they may be harmful to both. Oleomargarine may not be harmful as to health, but it is a deceit to sell it for butter, and this fraud should be stopped. So with all such articles, they should be sold for exactly what they are, and not for what they are not. Those who commit frauds in food-stuffs claim that competition in trade makes it a trade necessity. This is no excuse, and people should not be made to suffer for such selfishness. The English Parliament has examined the subject quite thoroughly, and on evidence received has recommended that the use of formaldehyde in foods or drinks be absolutely prohibited. There is no telling how much suffering and how many deaths the use of formaldehyde in milk, for example, has produced in the United States. The sin is at the present time all-prevailing. In England the use of all coloring matter and preservatives in milk has been recommended forbidden. If boric acid be used, it shall not exceed 0.25 per cent. expressed as boric acid. The only preservative allowed in butter and oleomargarine is boric acid, and this is not to exceed 5 per cent. expressed as boric acid. It would be much better to use none of it, especially if used for infants or invalids. For greening vegetables the copper salts are to be forbidden. Here is a great sociological problem, and, it has been well said, must come under the province of criminal psychology.

Great frauds are perpetrated in drugs and medicines and in so-called patent medicines. Here government supervision is absolutely necessary. Fraud and chicanery are rampant, and all of the people are sufferers. Drug fiends and alcoholics are continually being made and few raise a hand to save them. If any of these nostrums contain alcohol, or any drug whatever, the fact should be made known on the label and the amount of each openly indicated. Thus the public would be protected, and the vile trade, fattening on human infirmities, checked or abolished altogether.

It is estimated that the American people alone spend annually on adulterated foods and medicines ninety millions of dollars. There are imitations of almost everything good or useful in dietetics. The better things are, the more they are imitated or adulterated. You can make flour from ground damaged peas, rice, and soapstone. These ingredients have been found in brands of wheat flour, and the scoundrels making them are still unhanged. Peanut oil and cotton-seed oil are both sold for olive oil. The deception here is really more in name than in quality, but the fraud is no less glaring. Potato starch is used to adulterate sago, and glucose, flour, and clay can make a sugar to be sold as cane sugar. Potatoes, white and sweet, chicory, peas, beans, and acorns are manipulated and sold as pure coffee, and the coffee-bean itself is now imitated, no coffee whatever being used. Butter is imitated by oleomargarine and sold as butter. Here is the fraud. As oleomargarine, people know what they are getting. Filled cheese is very common, and thus skimmed milk and lard, or rather fats, are sold as full cheese. As to spices, no man knows what they contain. Condemned hardtack is a favorite adulterant. Sand, bran, sawdust, cocoanut shells, corn meal, olive seeds, and all sorts of earths and clays are used as adulterants. Pure cider vinegar is likely to be dilute sulphuric acid flavored with any sour trash available. Chrome yellow, that horrible, soul-consuming poison, is, I have no doubt, still used to give a golden egg color to the products of some bakeries. Candy is subject to all kinds of adulterants, and the only end to it is when the proper ingredients are cheaper than the injurious ones. Honey is imitated by maple sugar and glucose, and the very combs are imitated to hold it. As to preserves, those sold in the stores are mostly horrors. Glucose, gelatin, cochineal, with flavoring extracts from the coal-tar derivatives, compose the most of them, and whatever Providence may vouchsafe to us in the way of fruits, whether the harvest be great or small, these frauds are always obtainable by ignorant, credulous purchasers, the victims of conspiracy most injurious and most foul.

So it is in the furnishing of special dietetic foods for the sick, fraud keeps pace with rapacity; and as we progress in the evolution of knowledge to eradicate or check these scourges to mankind, the evolution of greed and deception keeps pace with us, and the sorry victims are sacrificed upon the altar of "man's inhumanity to man."

The Effects of using Food Preservatives. Dr. H. W. Wiley, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, Department of Agriculture of the United States, has been experimenting with a class of young men chosen for the purpose as to their physique, habits, etc., and so far has confined himself chiefly to the results obtained by using salicylic acid and borax. Every precaution has been taken in this work to keep it free from error and deception, and the results obtained are trustworthy. There was found to be, as was expected, a great difference in the resisting forces of the individual. With borax one man's limit was two grams in twenty-four hours. Another's limit extended to eleven grams in twenty-four hours. These limits were noted by the effects on the individual, the kind of food taken, the body weight, the temperature, the pulse, the examination of the blood, the analysis of the excreta, and the objective and subjective symptoms presented by the patient. Among other things Dr. Wiley said, as to the results of his experiments, that sugar was about the only article not adulterated at the present time, and that this was an exception with many exceptions. Dr. Wiley found no trouble in getting men for his so-called "poison squad," many more presenting than could be taken on. As to Wiley's results, they show that the use of salicylic acid as a food preservative is injurious to health, even in small quantities. One of the poison squad was happy, for in him rheumatism developed, and the salicylic acid cured him of it. This we all know it will do generally. As to borax, the food preserved with borax made the men all sick, and probably its long-continued use would produce kidney lesions in man, as is well known it does in cats fed on borated food. Here is positive evidence against their uses in food products that kills all arguments of an opposite view advanced by those who are interested in foisting such stuffs upon an unsuspecting public.

Recently American Medicine, in editorially summing up a cursory review of one of Dr. Victor C. Vaughan's lectures on food preservatives and the public health, very properly said, in quoting him, that poison is a substance which, by virtue of its chemic constituents, destroys or impairs cell function. The employment of poisons as food preservatives must be only when sanctioned by long-continued custom or upheld by law. Vaughan is thoroughly in accord with court decisions that the presence of such substances is illegal, whether they are actually in poisonous quantities or not. The right to administer poisons to other people is given only to physicians, and as the handling of poisons by the physician and the druggist is regulated by law, why not thus regulate the putting of poisons in our daily food?

To sum up the entire question, a food preservative must not be a cell poison, or, if it is a poison, it must be added to food under legal restrictions only, by persons duly authorized, and all foods containing it must bear labels plainly announcing its presence and its quantity. This is a reasonable and safe conclusion. Those who honestly hold opposing views and testify for persons who secretly employ preservatives, when they are called to justice, necessarily overlook the basic principles of the cause in which they pose as experts.