Foods: their composition and analysis : A manual for the use of analytical chemists and others. With an introductory essay on the history of adulteration / By Alexander Wynter Blyth. With numerous tables and illustrations.

  • Alexander Wynter Blyth
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Foods: their composition and analysis : A manual for the use of analytical chemists and others. With an introductory essay on the history of adulteration / By Alexander Wynter Blyth. With numerous tables and illustrations. 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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    as public exposure of the fraiid and whipping at the gate. The earliest regulations* related more to the goodness of the work and the general quality of the goods produced, than to adulteration. Every considerable trade was a little corporation, and bad workman- ship or falsity in the goods offered was an offence against the guild itself; the member was consequently expelled or punished by the officers of the guild. For example, in 1272 the two sworn masters of the bakers' guild at Berlin were held responsible for seeing that good bread was baked. The tailors of Berlin and the bakers of Basil excluded a man for ever from their respective guilds, if guilty of bad workmanship (1333). The Berlin weavei's, not quite so severe, excommunicated the offender against their regu- lations for one year (1295). The false butcher at Augsburg (1276) was expelled from the city for a month. In Nuremberg almost everything was regularly inspected ; there was a Bdcker- schau, a Sofranschau and a Schau with regard to brandy, drugs, syrup, hops, roses, tobacco, iron, meat, salt-fish, honey, leather, and many other things. It was at a Sofranschau in 1444, that one Jobst Fendeker was burnt, together with his false saffron, and in the following year two men and a woman were buried alive there for the same offence.t In all the cities of Germany there were copious regulations with regard to three things—bi-ead, wine, and drugs. § 14. Bread.—In Nuremberg, in the fifteenth century, the baker was not allowed to mix the different kinds of corn, which must be baked separately, lu Augsburg, it would appear that there were no less than six diffei-ent kinds of bread.:}: The punishments for ofiending bakers were various. In some places the delinquent was put in a basket at the end of a long pole and ducked in a muddy pool, similar treatment to that which in England befell the Scolds. § 1.5. Wine.—According to an old Augsburg chronicle, it was in 1453 that the adultei'ated wine of the Franks first appeared in that city; but there is abundant evidence to show that wine had been tampered with previously, and in 1390, one Ludwig von Langenhaus was sentenced to be led out of the city with his hands • A small work, Der Kam])f gcgen die Lebcnsmittelfalschung vou AusganiT des Mittelalters zum Ende des 18. Jalirlumderts, von L. Wasser- inaun, Mainz, 187!), contains some very intercstmg particulars with regard to the regulations in practice in the Middle Ages both as to General Hygi&ne and the .Adulteration of Food. t Henry II. of l<'rauce enacted that if safTron was adulterated, the ofTenders should be punished by corjwi'al chastisement, the drugs confiscated and burnt. t Maurer, Gescliicbte der Stadtverfassung in Deutschlaud. Bd. III., s. 24.
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