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are added to milk and sold under the guise of " milk " each year, at a
cost to the general public running into many thousands of pounds.
The objectionable practice of adding preservatives to milk is
very much in evidence in the summer months : and of the 23 samples
purchased in Stoke Xewington during July, August, and September.
1911, eleven were found to have been so drugged.
The employment of chemical agents which will prevent the
development of the micro-organisms concerned in putrefaction, and
termed "antiseptics," is extensively practised. The increasing use
of these substances for the preservation of articles of food, and the
necessity of keeping a rigid control over this practice in the interest
of public health, have rendered the detection and estimation of such
substances a very important matter.
It is certain that boric acid, salicylic acid, formic aldehyde, etc.,
are foreign to the animal body, and their presence must necessitate
a departure from the normal chemistry of life. Being antiseptics,
and therefore inimical to the life of the organisms that cause putrefaction,
they must exercise a retarding effect upon the activity of the
enzymes concerned in ordinary digestion. They, moreover, facilitate
an uncleanly, slovenly, treatment of food, and render it possible to
preserve articles in incipient decomposition for some time with even
appearance of freshness.
Boric acid in the amounts commonly employed prevents objective
decomposition, such as is detected by smell; but if decomposition
has reached a stage in which odour is appreciable it inhibits further
changes of this kind, and possibly leads to a diminution in the odour.
There is almost a consensus of opinion in the medical profession
that these agents, as often employed, may be injurious to health.
The writer has on two separate occasions seriously disturbed his
digestion bv taking 20 grains of boric acid daily, with food, for three
days. Doubtless injury to health would follow upon the use of even
a few grains daily when administered to babies in milk. Experiments
upon human beings Have produced conflicting results; but the