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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    FOOD PRESERVATIVES It is not only legitimate, but in every way most desirable, to keep food over from a season of super¬ abundance to a season of scarcity. From time imme¬ morial food has been preserved by drying, smoking, or salting, and, in modern times, by refrigeration and by heat (canning). These latter methods have come to play a large part in the food habits of civilized com¬ munities. Since food spoils because of microbic action, all methods of preservation are based upon the destruc¬ tion of the microbes or the restraint of their growth by various physical and chemical agencies. The use of certain chemical preservatives such as strong sugar and salt solutions, saltpeter brines, and acid pickles has long been known and countenanced. In recent times the employment of chemical preservatives has acquired a new aspect through the increasing tendency of manu¬ facturers to add to food products antiseptic chemicals in wide variety and of dubious physiological effect. It is not so easy and simple as it might appear to declare that no substance that is poisonous shall be added to food. The scientific conception of a poison is one involving the amount as well as the kind of sub¬ stance. Common salt itself is poisonous in large doses, but, as everyone knows, small amounts are not only not injurious, but absolutely necessary to health. Well- known and very powerful protoplasmic poisons such as strychnine and quinine are frequently administered in minute doses for medicinal purposes, without causing serious results. How complicated the question of using food pre¬ servatives really is appears in the case of smoked meats
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