FROM FOOD TO SCIENCE

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21400, 16 February 1935, Page 15

FROM FOOD TO SCIENCE

A History of Food Adulteration and Analysis. By Frederick Filby, MSc, Ph.D. Allen and Umvin. 265 pp. (10/- net.) The History of Science Library, edited by Professor A.' Wolf, has already produced some excellent volumes and promises more. While a history of food adulteration seems somwhat remote from the more fertile fields, it has a closer connection with the development of scientific technique and scientific thought than appears at first sight, and Dr. Filby has done well to point out the important part that the growth of public regulation of weights and measures together with ordinances denning the standard purity of foodstuffs has played in the development of analytical chemistry. A capital workman has here been at work. Not only is analytical chemistry his speciality, but in addition he has the clear, seeing eye that goes with a nicely appropriate sense of humour. So there is much to interest everybody familiar or not with the names of Scheele, Cavendish, Bergman, Accum, Thenard, Chevreul, de Saussure, Berzelius, and the important jobs they did. Dr. Filby is even of opinion that analytical chemistry, arch-enemy of adulteration, arose primarily from two very definite needs of the eighteenth century, one the call of mineralogists to explain the nature of rocks, the other the call of food investigators for help in the detection of adulteration. One would have thought, that medical needs were also an important if not the most important stimulus, buf. perhaps they may be regarded us productive of organic rather than analytical chemistry.

Grocers, bakers, brewer.";, vintners, and distillers come particularly under Dr. Filby's eye. The history of grocers is as inter esting as any. Salt and brimstone can doubtless boast a greater trading antiquity than any other commodities; but as a maker of science nothing is equal to pepper. The habit of meat-eating and the inability to preserve meat readily are beneath this fact. One of the earliest references to pepper is in a statute of Ethelrcd (978-1016) which directs the London Easterlings (spice traders from the East, whence comes our word "sterling") to pay a tax of cloth, five pairs of gloves, two barrels of vinegar, and ten pounds of pepper at Easter and Christmas. In the 'next century the pepperers are known to have formed a guild (Gilda de Pipariorum). These pepperers of Soper's Lane were the first custodians of the King's weights and the first official agents or garblers (Arabic ghabarla, to sift or select), whose duty it was to prevent adulteration. The reason for this was that the pepperers or Easterlings brought with them from the East the steelyard, more accurate and consistent than any other weighing apparatus known. Being sworn in as custodians of the Great or Gros Beam at Steelyard Wharf, where all weights greater than 24 pounds were required to be weighed, the company who weighed by it became known as the Grossarii, users of the Great Beam and the Great (over 241b) Weights. From this comes the name avoirdupois—using the ' heavy weights at the wharf. In the London Letter Book F. (1337-52) the pepperers of Soper's Lane, joined now with the Easterlings in one company, are referred to as "men (of the Mistery of Aver de pois." Finally in the time of Henry VI. (1429) a charter was issued incorporating the "Freemen of the mystery of grocers in the King s City of London." But grocers were not always what grocer-garblers should be, since there are frequent later records of sales and prices of P.D. and D.P.D. by which pure pepper was commonly adulterated. These trade abbreviations stand for pepper-dust and dirt-of-pepper-dust, the latter naturally baing a cheaper article than the former. Bakers, too, were not above suspicion as sophisticators, since among other regulations this is found: ''ltem: that ho baker shall prevent the servants of the good folks from being present at the kneading of his dough.' And a passage from the Liber Custumarum reads: "If any default shal. be found in the bread of a baker | of the City, the first time let him [be drawn upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to his own house through | the greatest streets where there are most people assembled, and through the streets which are most dirty, the false loaf hanging from | his neck."