of pounds annually? To detect adulterations, a cup of infusion of the article is to be taken, and a grain of sulphate of copper, or blue vitriol, added; when, if it be genuine green tea, a fine blue colour will be produced; if pure bohea, a deep blue, next to black, and if adulterated, a variety of colours, as green, black, yellow, &c. will take place. If, on adding a piece of nutgall, a black colour is produced, we have direct evidence of the existence of vitriol or copperas.

Coffee is imitated by commixing ground acorns, horsechesnuts, horse-beans, peas, nuts, barley, rice, wheat, parsnips and carrots, and especially by roasting blue succory or rye with a few almonds. All these substances are torrified

or roasted.

Chocolate is often adulterated with varilla and castile soap. Sugar is sophisticated by mixture with lime, chalk, gypsum, plaster of Paris, and various other white materials. Soft sugar is generally mixed with sand.

Milk and cream are sophisticated; the former is mixed with water, or the common cheese-dye (annatto), which occasions the mixture to assume the colour and consistence of cream. Skimmed milk and arrow-root, boiled together, are added to cream. Chalk and whiting cannot be added to milk, without precipitation. Molasses and salt are often substituted for the cheese-dye, but do not answer so well. The practice of placing milk in leaden pans to increase the cream, is highly injurious. Milk is often adulterated with starchy or feculent matters, which render it thick, oily, and creamy. Tincture of iodine will cause a yellow precipitate, when the milk is not boiled, but the colour may be bluish or lilac-blue in proportion as the adulteration is considerable. When the fluid is boiled, the precipitate will be blue.

Subcarbonate of potass is added, to prevent coagulation. The alkaline taste and effervescence with acids, and a yellow precipitate with hydrochlorate of platina, enable us to detect this fraud.

Oxide of zinc is added to thicken milk, and is detected by adding sulphuric acid, which causes a coagulation; the fluid is to be strained, and will give a white precipitate by the addition of the alkalies and hydrosulphates; this is to be

calcined with caustic-potass and powdered carbon, when a small portion of metallic zinc will be found on the bottom of the crucible.

Confectionery and Pastry are so much adulterated as to excite the abhorrence of the faculty. Dr. Paris designates them "an abomination."-(Work on Diet.) The white comfits, called sugar-peas, are composed of sugar, starch, and Cornish clay, a species of pipe clay. The red sugar drops are coloured with vermilion or sap-green, red lead, and copper. The cromate of lead is used as a yellow colour, and prussiate of iron as a blue. To the deleterious properties of these substances, I refer the reader to the article Mineral Poisons, as also for the modes of their detection. There is a valuable paper on Poisoned Confectionary, in the Lancet, No. 402, 1831, by Dr. O'Shaughnessy, which will be read with advantage by all who desire information on this point. It is well known that the almond-kernel flavour of custards, blancmange, &c. is communicated by the poisonous cherry-laurel, which affords so much prussic acid. For further information on the poisonous effects of the adulterations mentioned in this paragraph, I beg to refer the reader to the chapter on Poisons.

Adulteration of Medicines.-There is no country in the world in which medicines are so much adulterated as in this; in fact, it is almost impossible to procure a single article in the Pharmacopoeia in a genuine form. The most powerful medicines produce no effects, and the physician is disappointed almost hourly, and the patient's health or life sacrificed. This monstrous state of things is to be ascribed to the supineness and apathy of the Royal College of Physicians and Company of Apothecaries, who are empowered by law to destroy all bad drugs, and to fine all who vend them. But these bodies, unmindful of the solemn duty they owe the public, neglect to exert that salutary power which was confided to them by the legislature, and carelessly witness the incalculable sacrifice of human life, from adulteration of those ample agents which a beneficent Providence has bounteously afforded for the alleviation and the cure of the "many ills which flesh is heir to.” If there was no other charge, and there are many, against

these bodies but this, it ought to be more than sufficient to transfer their powers into other hands. The farcical inspection of shops, so well described by one of the Fellows of the College, has excited the sorrow and contempt of every genuine friend to medical science.

Let us next turn to the state of charlatanism in this empire, "the land of the good and the wise," where the most ignorant and illiterate persons are allowed, with reckless indifference, to assume the titles and privileges of educated medical men, to the destruction of human health and life. The College of Physicians, the guardians of public health, are too much inflated with pride and vanity to interfere to prevent wicked and inhuman impostors from deluding and ensnaring the giddy multitude, the ingens turba stultorum that constitutes the the public. Nay, we have even seen a Fellow of the College defending an ignorant, rash, and daring empiric, a convicted felon, and arguing that this nostrum-monger was a more successful practitioner than the most eminent physicians and surgeons of this metropolis. What encouragement exists for the regular physician and surgeon, who have sacrificed their lives, health, and property, in the study of their profession, when they find themselves superseded by some inspired pretender—some villainous quack? The sanction given to quacks and quackery in this country, has long and loudly been stigmatized by foreign writers, and is a disgrace to the College of Physicians. Most of the vermin that infest this intellectual city are "the lowest of the low"-cobblers, tailors, weavers, painters, footmen, pensioners, &c. &c. generally the most notorious vagabonds in their respective districts. "But unhappily," says an able writer," it appears that poor John Bull and his family are not gifted with the power of being aware of hypocrisy, advertising chartalans, and empirical nostrums; but through their proneness to gullability and love of the marvellous, the trade of quackery is daily increasing, and some hundreds of quacks swarm in every corner of the metropolis, and fatten on the murders which they are constantly perpetrating with their poisons." Recent examples attest the truth of these remarks. My limits prevent me from prosecuting this ample theme, but I console myself with the conviction, that the time has at

length arrived, when medical reform, like parliamentary reform, can no longer be withheld. When the stupid and insane corruptionalists, the medical boroughmongers, if I may be allowed the phrase, will, like their prototypes, be completely annihilated, or compelled to swallow a pill, as bitter and as potent as that marvellous discovery-the Reform act.

CHAPTER XI.

MEDICO-LEGAL QUESTIONS RELATING TO MENTAL

ALIENATION.

THE medico-legal questions relating to mental alienations are, according to Professor Amos, late of the London University, three in number; 1. whether a person be competent of manage his affairs; 2. whether he ought to be discharged from criminal responsibility; 3. whether his will and testament be a good will and testament. Insanity means a very different thing in the English language, according as it is spoken of with reference to these different inquiries."

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1. Whether the Person be competent to manage his Affairs? -Lord Chancellor Hardwicke held, that "unsound mind was understood by courts of law, importing not weakness of understanding, but a total deprivation of sense."-Collinson on Lunacy.

Lord Eldon held the opposite opinion. "Of late," says his lordship," the question has not been, whether the party is insane; but the court has thought itself authorized (though certainly many difficult and delicate cases, with regard to the subject, occur upon that), to issue the commission (de lunatico inquirendo), provided it is made out that the party is unable to act with any proper and provident management, liable to be robbed by any one, under imbecility of mind, not strictly insanity, but, as the mischief, calling for as much protection as actual insanity."-8 Vesey. Lord Lyndhurst reversed this verdict," that the party was not a lunatic, but partly from paralysis, and partly from old age, his memory was so much

impaired as to render him incompetent to the management of his affairs; and, consequently, that he was of unsound mind, and had been so for the term of two years.”—4 Russell's Rep. 183.

، In these cases of commissions of lunacy," says Mr. Amos, "the jury are to find the party either of sound or unsound mind." But this state of soundness of mind, in the legal sense of the present day, is perhaps not very easy to define, for it is neither lunacy, idiocy, imbecility, or incompetency to manage affairs. It however always involves the idea of unfitness to manage a person's affairs. The term unsoundness of mind, therefore, in its legal sense, seems to involve the idea of morbid condition of intellect, or loss of reason, coupled with an incompetency of the person to manage his own affairs. ، Soundness of mind is a legal term, the definition has varied, and cannot, even in the present day, he stated with any thing like scientific precision."-Lectures on Medical Jurisprudence, Medical Gazette, July, 1831, v. 8., p. 419.

2. Whether a Person ought to be discharged from Criminal Responsibility?—To determine this question, the medical witness is usually asked, "whether the person has a sense of right and wrong?" Mr. Amos 'thinks, this a question for the jury, and not for the medical jurist, who, in general, confines his investigation to the discovery of the sanity or insanity of the person. This is generally true, though in the course of examination of the supposed lunatic or maniac, the medical jurist may learn, from his conversation, his opinions on good and evil, right and wrong. "The kind and degree of insanity," continues Mr. Amos, "which renders a person irresponsible for criminal acts, is a subject upon which it is impossible to give you any precise and scientific notions."— Op. cit.

3. Competency of Insane Persons in Civil Cases.-- I shall next consider the liability of lunatics for their civil contracts. Lord Tenterden decided that a lunatic (Lord Portsmouth), was responsible for goods sold him by a tradesman, such goods being suitable to his condition, and his insanity being unknown to the plaintiff.-5 Barn. & Cresw. 172; and in a similar case, 1 Moody & Malkin, 105. The Ecclesiastical