A PUT DOWN FOR THE POISONMONGERS.
Try to blink it as we may, there is no doubt of the fact, that poisoning is as rifle now, as it was in the dark ages, the only difference being that we have another name for it. The synonym we use now is the term “Adulteration.” In the place of the Brinvilliers and Borgias of old, we have now in every city, town, and even village, a host of Browns and Joneses who are not less deadly poisoners, although their deadly work is done in course of ordinary business, and is not made a theme for opera or harrowing romance. Scarcely ever a Times passes without bringing the dark deeds of these poisoners to light. For instance, here is an account of an attempt at wholesale boy-slaughter which took place at Bristol a week or two ago, and which makes us think the Borgias could not have been a whit more cruel than the Browns:-
“On Thursday, the 15th inst., various persons became seriously ill after eating Bath buns purchased of a confectioner, at Redland. Among the suffers were six youths, pupils at a leading school at Clifton. Within half an hour after eating the buns they were seized with deadly nausea and other unmistakeable symptoms of irritant poison. Emetics having been promptly administered, the greater part of the material was fortunately removed from the stomach before much absorption had taken place. Nevertheless, the violent symptoms lasted six or eight hours, and one lad, who had eaten three buns, was in some danger from collapse. Mr. May, a publican, who had also partaken of the buns with like effect, applied to the Magistrate for advice last Monday, but as he had not been poisoned outright, they could afford no assistance.”
We seldom pin our faith upon the dicta of our Magistrates; but if it be really true that half killing by poison is regarded as no crime in the eyesight of the law, we think that the law clearly is afflicted with shortsightedness, and the sooner its defect is remedied the better. Proceeding with the poisoning, we are next informed that-
“The confectioner, when closely pressed, admitted that, being ambitious of making his buns appear extra rich, he had coloured them with chrome-yellow (i e., chromate of lead, an insidious poison, and, like all the compounds of lead, persistent and accumulative in its action on the system). To procure this, he repaired to a druggist only two doors off, who must therefore have known his occupation, and might have suspected the probable use to which he would apply a yellow powder. However, ‘no questions asked’ was the order of the day, the pigment was handed over, and the buyer and seller are at direct variance as to whether or no the word ‘poison’ was written on the packet. The confectioner confesses that he mixed his powder with his dough in the proportion of about six grains to each bun, and in a very few hours his unsuspecting customers were writing in agony from its effects.”
The ambition of the pastrycook to make his buns look “extra rich” by colouring them with poison, might perhaps seem “extra rich” for its consummate coolness, did not its heartless villany demand a stronger term for it. But other hands than the confectioner’s were made uncleanly by the bun-making. On further test it turned out that the chemist had a finger in the poisoned pie, and the chrome yellow left a black stain on his character. It proved upon analysis that-
“No chromate of lead was present at all (indeed it could not have produced such speedy and violent effects), but that the colouring matter was pure orpiment, or yellow sulphide of arsenic. The druggist when asked by a baker for a slow poison had sold him one of the most deadly under a false name. Application was subsequently made for a sample of this powder. He produced a brown paper parcel of it, loosely tied, and scattering its poisonous contents on all sides. Having put up a sample he wrote on it. ‘Chrome yellow’ (chromate of lead) though it proved on analysis to be yellow arsenic, and the parcel from which it was taken was actually so labeled. With the agents of life and death in the hands of such men, who among us is safe?”
Who indeed? will be the probable echo from the reader. Where druggists are so careless and so ignorant as this, any stroke of business they may do may be a deathstroke, and probably the reader, more especially if he be either nervous or dyspeptic, will also echo the suggestion which he finds subjoined:-
“There is little doubt but that many of the obscure chronic and dyspeptic complaints now so prevalent are due to the systematic adulteration of articles of food with unwholesome or slowly poisonous materials. This is difficult to trace, so it generally passes unheeded, but, when ignorance or knavishness risks our summary dismissal to our last account with a lozenge or a bun, a signal example should be made of the culprits. Private individuals, however, can hardly devote time and trouble as well as a considerable outlay to the getting up a prosecution. A public health officer, armed with powers for the detection and prosecution of such offenders, is imperatively demanded in large towns.”
This is the opinion of a Doctor who belongs to the Bristol School of Chemistry, and it is an opinion with which few doctors, except quack ones, we think would disagree. Quack doctors might say No to it because quack doctors mainly live by those “obscure complaints” which, it is said, adulteration is so likely to produce. We may presume then that quack doctors would prevent as far as possible the punishment of poisonmongers, and would be the last to sanction the appointment of detectives to eradicate such pests. We trust however that the Government have not forgotten their latinity, and have no need to be reminded that Salus populi est suprema lex. If they put down poisonmongery, they would doubtless in great measure be putting down quack-doctoring, and would thereby do the state a double service, killing two broods of destructives with one legal stone. Were a police force of Poisoner-detectives set on foot, there would be far fewer tricks of trade played than there now are; and the health of the community would be much less endangered.
Anyhow, till some such a provision has been made, we shall keep our sharpest eye upon purveyors of provisions. We shall look upon confectioners as vendors of dyspepsia, and shall regard a pastrycook as probably a poisoner. We shall eat the plainest food with inward fear and trembling, and after taking a ham sandwich we shall expect to want a stomach-pump. We don’t mind owning we had once a relish for Bath buns, but that has given place to terror after hearing of these Bristol ones. Should we be ever crossed in love and desirous to commit suicide, we might perhaps prescribe ourselves a brace of Borgia Bath buns, just as other lunatics would take a brace of pistols. But unless we went distracted and wished to blow our brains out, we should no more dream in future of lunching off Bath buns (and more especially if they looked “extra rich” ones) than we should of putting our nose into a blunderbuss, and asking some kind friend to come and pull the trigger.
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