Wine would also appear to have been exposed to fraudulent admixture in former times. Pliny mentions that in Rome considerable difficulty was experienced, even by the wealthy, in securing the pure article, and in Athens a public inspector was early appointed to prevent its adulteration. In England, during the reign of Edward the Confessor, punishment for brewing bad beer was publicly enforced, and, in 1529, official “ale tasters” flourished, without whose approval the beverage was not to be sold. In later years, Addison, referring to the manipulators of wine of his time, writes: “These subtle philosophers are daily employed in the transmutation of liquors, and, by the power of magical drugs and incantations, raise under the streets of London the choicest products of the hills and valleys of France; they squeeze Bordeaux out of the sloe and draw champagne from an apple.”[2] In the fifteenth century, at Biebrich on the Rhine, a wine sophisticator was forced to drink six quarts of his own stock, and it is recorded with due gravity that the test resulted fatally. Not very many years since, a manufacturer of wine at Rheims secured for his champagne, which was chiefly consumed in Würtemberg, a high reputation, on account of the unusually exhilarating effects following its use. Suspicion being at length aroused, Liebig made a chemical examination of the article, and found that it was at least unique in its gaseous composition, being charged with one volume of carbonic acid gas and two volumes of nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas.” These early attempts to control and punish adulteration, while often possessing interest on account of their quaintness, are chiefly important, as being the precursors of the protective legal measures which exist in more modern times. In 1802 the _Conseil de Salubrité_ was established in Paris, and this body has since developed into numerous health boards, to whom the French are at present mainly indebted for what immunity from food falsification they enjoy. A very decided advance upon all preceding methods to regulate the public supply of food was signalised in 1874 by the organisation in England of the Society of Public Analysts, who formulated a legal definition of adulteration, and issued the standards of purity which articles of general consumption should meet. This society was supported in its valuable services by the enactment, in 1875, of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, which, with the amendment added in 1879, seems to embrace all necessary safeguards against the offences sought to be suppressed. The results of their work are tabulated as follows:--