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information as to their action is to be found in the text books.
One authority states that Borax acts as a mild alkali on the
alimentary canal; tending to render the fluids alkaline and
cause diuresis, that it checks fermentation due to organisms and
is used as a diuretic and antacid. Another eminent authority
whom we have consulted refers to the tendency of these substances
to set up diarrhcea, a disease very prevalent in hot
weather, when the preservative is most used to prevent that
change which milk and cream are apt to undergo, rapidly, at a
high atmospheric temperature. In recent volumes of the Year
Book of Pharmacy, with which we were kindly favoured by Mr.
Robinson, a Member of the Vestry, there are a considerable
number of references to Boracic Acid as a food preservative, but
in most of them it is merely regarded as a sort of pickle. Professor
J. Forster, however, has published a series of observations,
based on experiments, in a German scientific journal
(ZV. Dingier's Polytechnisches Journal), which are summed up in
the Year Book of Pharmacy for 1884. If these experiments are
reliable, they would go to show that the addition of Boracic Acid
t o articles of food in far smaller proportion than customary, is
injurious to health. The author considers that 'even small
doses of it are injurious to the digestive organs.' This injurious
action, he says, depends on the circumstance that the drug acts
so as to materially increase the proportion of solid matters and
nitrogen in the fseces separated. Its action on the intestinal
discharges is well marked, even by the exhibition of as little as
4 grains per diem, and is stated to be in direct relation to the
quantity taken, and to be maintained for some time after the
doses of the drug have ceased. The action described is perceptible,
not only with vegetable or animal foods, which contain
a large proportion of indigestible ingredients, but also when
highly digestible food, such as milk and eggs, is taken. Food to
which the acid has been added tends to cause an increase in the
secretion of gall during assimilation. Its most important
action, however, is the increase which it causes in the discharge
of albuminous Rubstances from the intestinal canal. From this