See also _Imp. Mag._ for Dec. 1830; _Home Missionary_, for Oct. 1830; _News_, for Jan. 1831; _Atlas_, for Jan. 1831; _United Kingdom_, Jan, 1831, &c. &c. Deadly Adulteration, AND SLOW POISONING; OR, DISEASE AND DEATH IN THE POT AND THE BOTTLE. INTRODUCTION. The able and patriotic Editor of the Literary Gazette, No. 156, in the course of his review of Mr. Accum’s meritorious work on Culinary Poisons, makes the following just and striking remarks: One has laughed at the whimsical description of the cheats in Humphrey Clinker, but it is too serious for a joke to see that, in almost every thing which we eat or drink, we are condemned to swallow swindling, if not poison—that all the items of metropolitan, and many of country, consumption are deteriorated, deprived of nutritious properties, or rendered obnoxious to humanity, by the vile arts and merciless sophistications of their sellers. So general seems the corruption, and so fatal the tendency, of most of the corrupting materials, that we can no longer wonder at the prevalence of painful disorders and the briefness of existence (on an average) in spite of the great increase of medical knowledge, and the amazing improvement in the healing science, which distinguish our era. No skill can prevent the effects of daily poisoning; and no man can prolong his life beyond a short standard, where every meal ought to have its counteracting medicine. Devoted to disease by baker, brewer, grocer, wine-merchant, spirit-dealer, cheesemonger, pastry-cook, confectioner, &c. the physician is called to our assistance; but here again the pernicious system of fraud, as it has given the blow, steps in to defeat the remedy: even the physician’s prescription is adulterated! Mr. Accum’s account of water (i. e. the Companies’ water—the filthy and unwholesome water supplied from the Thames, of which the delicate citizens of Westminster fill their tanks and stomachs, at the very spot where one hundred thousand cloacinæ, containing every species of filth, and all unutterable things, and strongly impregnated with gas, the refuse and drainings of hospitals, slaughter houses, colour, lead, and soap works, drug-mills, manufactories, and dung-hills, daily disgorge their abominable contents) is so fearful, that we see there is no wisdom in the well: and if we then fly to wine, we find, from his analysis, that there is no truth in that liquid; bread turns out to be a crutch to help us onward to the grave, instead of being the staff of life; in porter there is no support, in cordials no consolation; in almost every thing poison, and in scarcely any medicine, cure!