Arthur Hill Hassall, physician & sanitary reformer : a short history of his work in public hygiene, and of movement against the adulteration of food and drugs / [Edwy Godwin Clayton].
- Clayton, Edwy Godwin.
- Date:
- 1908
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Arthur Hill Hassall, physician & sanitary reformer : a short history of his work in public hygiene, and of movement against the adulteration of food and drugs / [Edwy Godwin Clayton]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![passing of the first general Adulteration Act, of August 6, i860 (‘ An Act for Preventing the Adulteration of Articles of Food or Drink ’), the forerunner of the Act of 1872, which led to the appointment of public analysts for the various counties and boroughs. Among the recommendations in Dr. Hassall’s evidence ; in ‘ Food and its Adulterations’; and in ‘Adulterations Detected,’ were the appointment, in the principal towns and districts of the United Kingdom, of inspectors and analysts, to be vested in the municipal or other local authorities, the same analyst perha])s acting for several towns the establishment by the Government of a Central Board or Commission, on which there should be a sufficient number of scientific analysts, microscopical and chemical, entrusted with powers to deal with the adulteration of the food and medicine of the Metropolis and its suburbs ; periodical returns to be pub- lished by the Central Board, and to be furnished by local analysts to that Board ; names and addresses, of all vendors of articles analysed, to be published, whether the samples were genuine or adulterated; the services of sanitary in- spectors to be utilized to some extent in procuring articles of food and medicine ; sellers of adulterated samples to be punished by fines, the actual adulterator by fine or imprison- ment, the latter for second offences ; persons convicted of selling adulterated goods were to keep a placard containing the text of the judgment condemning them posted up in the most prominent part of their windows for three, six, nine, or twelve months at a time; and, lastly, examining inspectors were to be appointed in import and export towns, to prohibit the importation or exportation of adulterated articles, in- cluding drugs. At a later date {Lancet, 1873, i. 882, 883), Dr. Hassall drew up a list of additional recommendations, of which the following were the more important: ^ Cf. Dr. Thurnall, in chapter i. of the Rev. Charles Kingsley’s ' Two Years Ago,’ written in 1856: . Till we have, as we ought to have, a first-rate analytical chemist settled in every county town, and paid, in part at least, out of the county rates.’](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28989995_0052.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
