by two sergeants for one day through the streets of Bergheim, carrying placards both before and behind, with "frelateurs de vin" printed thereon. They had also to pay 30 livres fine, "pour faire prier Dieu pour le repos de l'âme du défunt," and the fine of 130 livres, pronounced by the first judge. The council promulgated a very severe decree directed against such practices.

It was also forbidden to adulterate wine with litharge, Indian wood, isinglass, "raisin de bois," or other drugs, or mixtures capable of injuring the health of those who drank the wine, under a penalty of 500 livres and corporal punishment. Even the possession of matters likely to be used for adulteration was an offence. So late as 1710, one Denys Porcher and his wife were convicted of conveying barrels of "vin de raisin de bois" into Paris. They were fined 30 livres, the four barrels of wine were spilt on the pavement, and the sentence placarded in Paris and various places around.

§ 10. Butter.-An Ordonnance* of the Provost of Paris, dated November 25, 1396, forbade the colouring of butter with "soucy flowers," other flowers, herbs, or drugs. Old butter, likewise, was not to be mixed with new, but the sale was to be separate, under penalty of confiscation and fine.

The ancient laws of the merchant butter-sellers and fruiterers, confirmed in 1412, reiterated the above, and also forbade the sale of butter in the same shop in which fish was sold. The retail or sale of butter by spicers, chandlers, apothecaries, and generally by all carrying on offensive trades, was made illegal. A subsequent enactment in 1519 confirmed this law.

§ 11. Drugs. The drug-sellers were also under regulation, and without doubt their practices, with regard to sophistication, were quite on a par with those of other trades. Gargantua in Paris is made to visit the shops of druggists, herbalists, and apothecaries, where he "diligently considered the fruits, roots, leaves, gums, seeds, the grease and ointment of some foreign parts, as also how they did adulterate them-i.e., all the said drugs."+

In the Middle Ages the French apothecaries were at first confounded and amalgamated, as in England, with the merchant spicers; but in 1777 the two trades were separated, and they formed a definite body. In the fifteenth century the shops were little more than open booths, as may be seen from a miniature in "Le Régime des Princes," a manuscript of the fifteenth century, preserved in the Arsenal Library, Paris.

Philip VI., as early as 1336, issued a regulation by which no * Traité de la Police, tome i. livre iv. titre ix.

+"Rabelais," cxxiv., p 53.

one could be an apothecary unless he was a born or naturalised Frenchman, and a good Catholic. According to the law, neither the spicers nor the apothecaries were permitted to employ in the preparation of their medicines, drugs, confections, conserves, oils, or syrups, any sophisticated or exhausted or corrupted drugs, under penalty of a fine of fifty livres, and the seizure and burning of the merchandise thus adulterated in front of the dwelling in which it had been found.

Charles VIII. released the apothecaries from some of the strict regulations of earlier times, and both he and his successors were the authors of many edicts relative to the apothecaries and spicers; besides which these trades were regulated by local enactments in different towns.

§ 12. Conseils de Salubrité.-In 1802 the "Conseil de Salubrité" was established in Paris. It originally consisted of only four members, and took cognisance of adulteration, epizootics, unhealthy trades, and a little later of the administration of prisons and public charities. Afterwards the Conseil had the direction, generally speaking, of public hygiène.

The Conseil de Salubrité of the Seine in its later development was composed of fifteen titular and six supplementary members, including also several honorary members, with others, who, by virtue of their office, were members of the committee. These were, the Dean, the Professors of Hygiène, of Legal Medicine, and of the Faculty of Medicine, a Member of the "Conseil de Santé des Armées," the Director of the School of Pharmacy, the General Secretary of the Préfecture of Police, the Inspector-General of the bridges and causeways, besides engineers, architects, and the chiefs of the police departments. Most of the provinces followed the example of the capital, and established "Conseils de Salu brité." All these boards, whether provincial or Parisian, had one essential feature in common-viz., that the medical, veterinary, and chemical professions were always represented on them. Whatever expert a town possessed, would probably have a voice, and find a seat, in the "Conseil de Salubrité." From these health boards, or committees, very excellent reports have emanated, and they continue at the present time to do useful work.

III.-ADULTERATION IN GERMANY.

§ 13. If we turn to the records of Germany, we find that all those who adulterated foods or drinks in the Middle Ages were punished severely, with painful and dishonouring penalties, such

as public exposure of the fraud and whipping at the gate. The earliest regulations* related more to the goodness of the work and the general quality of the goods produced, than to adulteration. Every considerable trade was a little corporation, and bad workmanship or falsity in the goods offered was an offence against the guild itself; the member was consequently expelled or punished by the officers of the guild. For example, in 1272 the two sworn masters of the bakers' guild at Berlin were held responsible for seeing that good bread was baked. The tailors of Berlin and the bakers of Basil excluded a man for ever from their respective guilds, if guilty of bad workmanship (1333) The Berlin weavers, not quite so severe, excommunicated the offender against their regulations for one year (1295). The false butcher at Augsburg (1276) was expelled from the city for a month. In Nuremberg almost everything was regularly inspected; there was a Bäckerschau, a "Safranschau," and a "Schau" with regard to brandy, drugs, syrup, hops, roses, tobacco, iron, meat, salt-fish, honey, leather, and many other things. It was at a Safranschau" in 1444, that one Jobst Fendeker was burnt, together with his false saffron, and in the following year two men and a woman were buried alive there for the same offence.t

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In all the cities of Germany there were copious regulations with regard to three things-bread, wine, and drugs.

§ 14. Bread.-In Nuremberg, in the fifteenth century, the baker was not allowed to mix the different kinds of corn, which must be baked separately. In Augsburg, it would appear that there were no less than six different kinds of bread. The punishments for offending bakers were various. In some places the delinquent was put in a basket at the end of a long pole and ducked in a muddy pool, similar treatment to that which in England befell "the Scolds."

§ 15. Wine.-According to an old Augsburg chronicle, it was in 1453 that the adulterated wine of the Franks first appeared in that city; but there is abundant evidence to show that wine had been tampered with previously, and in 1390, one Ludwig von Langenhaus was sentenced to be led out of the city with his hands

A small work, "Der Kampf gegen die Lebensmittelfälschung von Ausgang des Mittelalters zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, von L. Wassermann, Mainz, 1879," contains some very interesting particulars with regard to the regulations in practice in the Middle Ages both as to General Hygiène and the Adulteration of Food.

Henry II. of France enacted that if saffron was adulterated, the offenders should be punished by corporal chastisement, the drugs confiscated and burnt.

+

Maurer, "Geschichte der Stadtverfassung in Deutschland." Bd. III.,

bound and a rope round his neck, because of his practices in the adulteration of wine. In 1400, two wine-sellers were branded and otherwise severely punished, and about the same period a special law was enacted forbidding the sulphuring of casks, the colouring of wine, or the addition of sugar, honey, or other sweet things. In the year 1435, says the old chronicle, " were the taverner Christian Corper and his wife put on a cask in which he had sold false wine, and then exposed in the pillory. The punishment was adjudged because they had roasted pears, and put them into new sour wine, in order to sweeten the wine. Some pears were hung round their necks like unto a Paternoster." It further appears that they narrowly escaped being burnt.

In 1451, the city of Cologne made a strong representation to the governing body at Antwerp on the prevalent adulterations of wine. At Biebrich on the Rhine, in 1482, a falsifier of wine was condemned to drink six quarts of his own wine. He died from the effects. In the fifteenth century at Ulm, every tavern-keeper had to appear at stated times before the sheriff (Stadtrechner†) and swear that neither he, his wife, his children, nor any one else in his name, had mixed with the wine, woad or extract of woad, chalk, mustard seed, clay, "Scharlachkraut," must of apples, lead, mercury or vitriol; no water might be added, and the same wine was to be retailed as bought. The Stadtrechner had also to see that no sour, ropy, or otherwise bad wine was sold. In the same town an Ordonnance of 1499 decreed, that since adulteration was most readily practised by putting substances into the cask, no cask was henceforth to be closed up save by the sworn cooper, who, on finding anything amiss, was to give information; penalty for default, a guilder.

In the fourteenth century, Nuremberg was a great centre of the wine trade; consequently in that city there were very many regulations against adulteration of wine, but they were similar to those already mentioned. At Frankfort on the Maine, on false wine being found, the cask was placed on the knacker's cart, and a red flag displayed, with the inscription "stummer Wein," that is, mute or dumb wine. The jailer marched before, the rabble after, and when they came to the river they broke the cask and tumbled the stuff into the stream. About the same date, wine is said to

In some places in very early times, the regular legal penalty was capital punishment; for example, in 1269, the law of Ripen punished the seller of false honey and wax with death.

+ Perhaps "Stadtrechner" might be translated "Mayor."

The article for sale was sometimes merely forbidden to be sold: this was especially the case with importations from other countries. For example, at Cologne, in 1483, casks of butter imported from England, which were found

have been sophisticated with the following substances: earth, eggs, albumen, argol, mustard, salt, burnt salt, sweet milk, brandy, almond milk, wheat flour, clay, and several other things.

In the early part of the seventeenth century, a circumstance happened in Wurtemberg, which led to some stringent regulations with regard to metallic contamination of wine. A number of people having been seized with colic, paralysis, and other symptoms of poisoning by lead, it was noticed that all those attacked drank one particular species of wine only; and on investigation the epidemic was discovered to be due to the contamination of the wine by the use of metallic fastenings to the casks. The occurrence is related by Gockelius,* who styles the disease" Weinkrankheit."

§ 16. Drugs.-Those who sold drugs, roots, spices, and the like, were strictly supervised, and in the reign of Frederick the Second of Prussia the examination of drugs was made a special calling, the inspectors being appointed by the king.

In Augsburg, Frankfort, and a few other places, the trade in medicine was taxed. By virtue of this tax the druggists and doctors enjoyed a monopoly, and medicines were forbidden to be sold by other trades.

In the seventeenth century there were committees of doctors, whose duty it was to inspect the druggists, and from the committees--as in London, so on the Continent-originated the pharmacopoeias. Thus Pharmacopoeia Antwerpiensis, 1661; P. Utrajectina, 1664; P. Amstelodamensis, 1668; Antidotarium Bononiense, 1674; Regia Chemica et Galenica, Geneva, 1684, &c.t

IV. HISTORY OF ENGLISH LEGISLATION IN REFERENCE TO THE ADULTERATION OF FOOD.

§ 17. The first General Act in this country was the Act of 1860, previous to which date individual articles, such as tea, coffee, chicory, beer, and wine, were legislated for by special statutes, the to contain a mixture of old and new, were not allowed to enter the market. In like manner false oil was excluded from the city.

Beschreibung der Weinkrankheit," 1637.

+ The dukes of Saxony regulated the trade of druggist as early as 1607. J. Guillaume published Réglements entre les médecins et les apothicaires pour la visite des drogues. Dijon, 1605. Thomas Bartolin edited the work of Licetti Benanci-Declaratio fraudum quae apud pharmacopeos committuntur. Franc. 1667 and 1671, Svo.