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GENERAL REPORT. 11
food. These materials would probably have been sold to
cheap restaurants, in order to be worked up as food. A
prosecution was ordered by the Vestry of St. James's, and
the magistrate condemned the dealer to three months
imprisonment with hard labour, also to the payment of
a fine of one shilling and three guineas costs.
The Parish has been visited by no epidemic during the
year 1900.
No death has been certified as due to arsenical poisoning;
and, so far as is known, no case of sickness has been
assignable to poisoning by means of fictitious beers, or
sugars, or sweets.
In connection with the recent poisonings by means of
arsenicated beers, the question has been asked: What
proportion of arsenic should be allowed to pass in beer and
other food? I submit that a short and plain answer should
be given to this question. The answer is that no food
which shows any trace of arsenic—when properly examined
by means of Marsh's test—should be saleable, except
under the penalty of a criminal prosecution, and also the
exposure of the vendor to a civil action for damages on
the part of any person injured by such arsenicated food.
The roasting of malt may be done perfectly in rotating
iron cylinders without any sort of exposure to the fumes
of arsenious coke, just as coffee may be roasted either
in cylinders or by means of high-pressure steam at a
baking temperature- As to the use of maize, rice, and
other "substitutes' for barley and barley-malt, beers
made from such materials ought to be declared as such;
just as "artificial butter" has to be declared as "margarine,"
and is not allowed to be sold as butter. This
manufacture of " malt substitutes" by means of sulphuric
acid, and the loading up of ales with gypsum in order to