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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    and fish, which owe their keeping qualities to the creosote and other substances with which they are impregnated by the smoke. Although these substances are much more highly poisonous than chemical preservatives like benzoic acid, over which much concern has been ex¬ pressed, but little if any objection has been made to the use of smoked foods. The use of benzoic acid (benzoate of soda) as a food preservative illustrates several phases of the con¬ troversy. Observations by Wiley in 1908 upon so-called “poison squads” were thought by him to indicate that benzoate of soda administered with food led to “a very serious disturbance of the metabolic functions, attended with injury to digestion and health.” On the other hand, the experiments of the Referee Board of Scientific Experts (1909), conducted with at least equal care and thoroughness, were considered to warrant the conclusions that: (1) Sodium benzoate in small doses (under five-tenths of a gram per day) mixed with the food is without deleterious or poisonous action and is not injurious to health. (2) Sodium benzoate in large doses (up to four grams per day) mixed with the food has not been found to exert any deleterious effect on the general health, nor to act as a poison in the general acceptance of the term. In some directions there were slight modifications in certain physiological processes, the exact significance of which modification is not known. (3) The admixture of sodium ben¬ zoate with food in small or large doses has not been found to injuriously affect or impair the quality or nutritive value of such food. Still later experiments under the auspices of the German government (1913) showed that in the case of dogs and rabbits relatively large doses of benzoic acid
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