Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked: Disease and Death in the Pot and BottleAnonymous
Science
Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked: Disease and Death in the Pot and Bottle
Anonymous
Drug adulteration; Food adulteration and inspection
After all the vapouring and drivelling nonsense that has been said,
sung and trumpeted forth by a certain portion of the Periodical Press
respecting the “Simplicity of Health,” it is really consoling to find
at last a man of sense and critical acumen having spirit and honesty
enough to relieve the public from the delusions under which it is
suffering from the book in question.
“An immense quantity of drivel,” says the spirited Editor of The
Edinburgh Literary Journal, 1829, “has found its way into books
professing to give an account of the best mode of preserving health;
but of all the drivel it has ever been our lot to peruse, that
contained in the work entitled the “Simplicity of Health,” is the most
pre-eminent.” The ingenious and honest reviewer, after having pointed
out several of the fooleries and extravagancies of the book, adds, “We
have no patience with a piece of humbug like this; we shall not insult
the good sense of our readers with more of this doting nonsense.”
It must be admitted that this sentence is dictated in the strictest
and the justest sense of criticism, and that had all those who have
ventured to laud and recommend that dangerous little book adopted
somewhat of its spirit, much bodily and mental suffering might have
been saved to many people who will become the victims of its misjudged
and culpable directions.
The burst of indignation and ridicule expressed by the Critic
respecting Hortator’s foolish directions for “_Squirting water briskly
into the eyes_ BY _a syringe_,” is too fraught with truth and utility
to be omitted: “Is it not plain from this, that the poor squirting
wretch must have bleared and blood-shot eyes? Imagine a beautiful girl
at her morning toilette, presenting one of this dirty old booby’s
squirts at her clear blue laughing eyes! But the fact is, this impudent
old wife must be descended from a long line of tailors, who have bred
in and in, till the imbecile race has ended in the scarecrow who has
spawned the “Simplicity of Health.”
It is with much satisfaction that I am able to support the opinion
which I have expressed at page 166, by so just and judicious a
criticism as the above; had I stood alone in opinion, that opinion
would have been assigned to any other than its true cause—_a sense of
public duty_, which ought with every true patriot to be paramount to
every other consideration.
* * * * *
I shall now close my well meant, and I hope I may say, useful and
patriotic little volume, with a few words respecting those pests
and scourges of society, the sharking and extortionate part of the
pawnbroking trade, and those banes of human comfort and existence the
madhouses.
PAWNBROKERS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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