Food poisoning / by Edwin Oakes Jordan.

  • Edwin O. Jordan
Date:
[1917]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Food poisoning / by Edwin Oakes Jordan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    MINERAL OR ORGANIC POISONS ADDED TO FOOD Well-known mineral or organic poisons—“ chemical poisons”—sometimes find their way into food, being either introduced accidentally in the process of manu¬ facture or preparation, or being added deliberately with intent to improve the appearance or keeping qualities of the food. ARSENIC So powerful a poison as arsenic has been occasionally introduced into food by stupidity or carelessness. Arsenic has been found by English authorities to be generally present in food materials dried or roasted with gases arising from the combustion of coal, and in materials treated with sulphuric acid during the process of preparation. In both cases the source is the same: the iron pyrites, practically always arsenical, con¬ tained in the coal or used in making the sulphuric acid. A celebrated epidemic of “peripheral neuritis” in the English Midlands in 1900 was traced to the presence of dangerous quantities of arsenic in beer. About six thousand persons were affected in this outbreak and there were some seventy deaths. The beer coming from the suspected breweries had all been manufactured with the use of brewing sugars obtained from a single source, and these sugars were found to have been impregnated with arsenic by the sulphuric acid used
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