POISONED BEER VICTIMS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2456, 10 April 1901, Page 43

POISONED BEER VICTIMS.

An exhaustive report on the beer-poison-ing epidemic in Manchester and elsewhere was issued as a parliamentary paper at the beginning of February. Dr G. S. Buchanan, of the Local Government Board, gives a collection of facts and figures which by no means tend to minimise the gravity of the poisonous-beer trouble. The total number of persons officially icported to Dr Buchanan and to Dr Darra Moir, who was associated with him in the inquiry, was some 4000, the localities affected including Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Blackburn, Preston, Birkenhead, Cheater, Wolverhampton, Bilston, Walsall, Darlas^on, Stone, Lichfield, Stourbridge, Market Drayton, Ilkley, Worksop, Everton, Birmingham, Northampton, Leeds, Leicester, and We<=t Bromwich, and many other places not specifically named. The symptoms manifested were either those of the alcoholic type or the arsenical type, or a combination of these two ; and there Was, in fact, a very large proportion of cases •which presented all the manifestations of the form of peripheral neuritis which hitherto would unhesitatingly have been termed "alcoholic "—the type resulting solely from the consumption of large quantities of arsenic — but in which, as a matter of fact, the victims were very small consumers of arsenic. DEATHS NOT UVT TO ALCOHOLISM, BUT TO

AESEICIC.

For years past, it seems, it has teen so customary to associate " peripheral neuritis" •with excessive drinking that fatal cases may easily have been certified to as due to alcoholism, or to cirrhosis of the liver, or merely to neuritis; whereas, in fact, in the light of our present knowledge of the subject, the probabilities are that the bulk of these cases have been due to arsenical poisoning.

With regard to the beers examined, the contamination appeals to have varied from one-eighth of a grain of arsenious acid per gallon to as much as a grain and a-half.

Certain brewers, despite all the warnings issued, were found to be still selling artenicated beer as lately as January last.

More serious than this circumstance, with Which there are legal means of deaing, is the fact that arsenic has been found in numerous beers to which no arsenical brewing sugar has gained access The source of the contamination in these instances is still • mystery.

ENOUGH TO KILL A MILLION IN A WEEK

Dr Campbell Brown, the city analyst of liiverpool, made some alarming statements at the resumed inquest in that city on one of the victims of the beer-poisoning epidemic. He said that, basing his calculations on the percentage of white arsenic found in the sulphuric acid used at Messrs Bostock's brewing sugar works at Garston, upwards of four tons of the poison would be found in 30 weeks' delivery of beer. This would give a total of 3001b a week, or enough in seven days to kill a million persons, or during the season to fatally poison the whole population of Great Britain,.

Nine directors of the Farmers' Brewing. Company, Everton, near Bawtry, were fined £10 each and costs at Retford, under the Food and Drugs Act, for permitting to be ■used in the manufacture of beer ingredients injurious to public health.

The County Council of Nottingham were the prosecutors. The brewer in the employ of the company, Andrew Naismith, was proceeded against under a separate summons, and admitted he had used Boatock's glucose. He -nas fined £20 and costs.