“Plures crapula quam gladius,” says the old adage, which, in a free translation, may be paraphrased “Cookery depopulates like a pestilence.” To those versed in the business of disease it is well known that this is no exaggeration. But, dismal as is the destruction of human life from this source, it is by no means equal to that occasioned by the effects of the nefarious traffic in the adulteration of the necessaries of life; the pernicious and destructive mixtures and combinations to which they are subject have produced greater ravages on health, and given a greater empire to death than the united scourges of famine and the sword in combination with the refinements of cookery and the increase of gastrophilism:—they occasion the loss of tens of thousands of human lives every year in the metropolis alone. It has with truth been said that to so alarming an extent have the illicit practices of poisonous adulteration arrived, “that it would be difficult to mention a single article of food which is not to be met with in an adulterated state; and there are some substances which are scarcely ever to be procured genuine.” These spurious mixtures and counterfeit articles are combined and manufactured with so much skill and ingenuity, as to elude and baffle the discrimination of the most experienced judges. And, for the purpose of ensuring the secrecy of the nefarious traffic, “the processes are distributed and subdivided among distinct operators, and the manufactures are carried on in separate establishments.” The tasks of proportioning the ingredients and that of their composition and preparation are assigned to distinct persons. In fact, “the traffic in adulterated commodities finds its way through so many circuitous channels as to defy the most scrutinizing endeavour of individual exertion to trace it to its source.” And the frequency of the act has rendered the conscience of the offenders callous and indifferent to the consequences. The man who would shudder at the idea of giving a dose of arsenic to a single individual sleeps soundly in his bed, though he knows that he administers as fatal, though a slower, poison to thousands every day. And such a man is the baker, the miller, the wine-merchant, the brewer, the publican, the druggist, the tea-dealer, and every dealer who adulterates an article of food. And yet, those thoughtlessly wicked men suffer their consciences to be seared and bribed to silence through their self-interest and craving appetite for unreasonable and unrighteous gain! With respect to those “filthy nuisances” the gin-shops and workshops of the wine and spirit dealers, which have not inaptly been termed “the elaboratories of disease and of premature death,” the following remarks, which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1828, are dictated in the justest spirit of criticism and of public duty. It is to be wished that all journalists were disposed, in like manner, to denounce fraud and imposture.