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46
unless the food they purchase is a poison, which
they are really unable to detect.
Soda Water.
The Adulteration Act gives power to the analyst
over drugs as well as food. On the border land,
between food and drugs, stands a beverage or
medicine known by the name of Soda Water. This
liquid is sold in bottles, and is professedly an
imitation of some natural springs which contain a
certain quantity of carbonate of soda and carbonic
acid. In England this water is entirely an artificial
preparation, and is sold by chemists and druggists
as a medicine and by publicans as a beverage. It is
supposed to contain from ten to fifteen grains
of carbonate of soda in a bottle containing about
ten ounces of water. The medicinal agency of
this beverage consists in its carbonate of soda, and
it becomes a matter of importance for sick people
and convalescents, for whom this liquid is ordered,
that they should have the supposed quantity of soda
in the water.
From an examination of six specimens of this
water bought at chemists and druggists and publicans,
I found that none of them contained in the bottle
a residue of ten grains; that various other salts
besides carbonate of soda were contained in the
water and that in some of them was a considerable
quantity of organic matter.
The conclusion I came to was this : that none of
these waters were genuine mineral waters; that