The Licensed Victuallers

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XI, Issue 528, 31 January 1901, Page 18

The Licensed Victuallers

So much publicity has been THE given to this subject that the azSjrg. opinions of that leading Trade journal, ‘‘The L.V. Gazette,” are well worthy of reproduction. In an issue just come to hand it says that the poisoned beer scare which during the past fortnight has been productive of a curious complication of conflicting emotions among the parties interested —more or less directly, as the case may be—has already touched top, and is on the decline. Beer drinkers in the North and Midlands have been agitated doctors and analysts have been galvanised into a fever of speculation and investigation, brewers have been overtaken with financial loss and plunged into anxiety, and the Temperance Party alone have derived any gratification from the aspect of the situation. The source of trouble appears to have been located, all cause for further alarm has been eradicated, and it is more than probable that before this mischief has been brought home to those who are responsible for its ravages the public will have entirely lost interest in the occurrence. We remember a similar, but more alarming scare, which occurred some thirty years ago, when the suspected presence of strychnine in malt liquors agitated the country, and kept the chemical societies working overtime for weeks on end, and we observe in the present scare the same symptoms of wild conjectures, alarmist theories, hopeless exaggeration, and unnecessary alarm. But out of this conglomeration of facts, fallacies, and accusations —this stew of odds and ends of conjecture and distorted perspectives —one or two truths that seem to warrant the faith that is reposed in them may ’ be derived. It would appear from analysis, and inferentially by the action adopted by the brewers in Liverpool, Birmingham. Manchester, and other Midland towns, that the cheaper kinds of beer that have until recently been on sale in these districts have been productive of a form of peripheral neuritis, arising from arsenical poisoning. That is the least certain deduction we can at present draw from the material before us. That the scare arising from the facts is greatly put of proportion to the evil produced is a matter of far greater certainty, but more conclusive than either of these conclusions is the fact that the peril, whatever may have been its genesis or its magnitude, is at an end. The beer under suspicion has been summarily judged, and hundreds upon hundreds of barrels of liquor have been broached to feed the sewers. In Liverpool the brewers have called for the appointment of a special commission to investigate the cause of the poisoning, the Yorkshire Brewers’ Association, and the Manchester and Birmingham firms are all taking the most strenuous steps to clear up the mystery, and render a repetition of the trouble impossible. Tracing back the evil to the fountain-head, the experts are agreed that the arsenic will probably be discovered in the glucose or invert sugar employed in the manufacture of beer. Whoever may be responsible for the harm caused, the retailer is, we are glad to know, fully and entirely exonerated. The publican is blameless. So far as our personal and immediate interest is engaged the case ends here. But we are closely, if lees intimately, concerned with the standing of the brewer in this connection, and in his case also the blame appears to be further to seek. To what extent the obligation of testing the purity of the ingredients supplied for manufacture of beer devolves upon the brewer remains to be seen ; the point rests upon the precise duties of the scientists who are retained by the large brewing firms. If the accepted explanation that the brewer is entitled to assume that the manufacture of glucose—which has been erroneously described as a ‘‘necessaiy ingredient ” of beer —would supply him with the stuff in a state fit for u-e holds good, then are we morally

bound to absolve the maker of the glucose, who declares that in purchasing the sulphuric acid used in its manufacture, he.has always “ asked for the best.” By this train of reasoning we may trace the presence of arsenic in beer to the man who purveys the sulphuric acid, and from him back again to the manufacturer who sells the glucose to the brewer, who supplies the beer to the publican, who sells the liquor which per se, is supposed to have caused arsenical poisoning among many people who have partaken of it. Although the general facts appear to lead to the conclusion that the unusual number of sufferers from this malady have been affected by beer, it must not be forgotten that arsenical poisoning may be contracted from a number of other foods and domestic substances. There is the equally menacing if less dangerous color, known variously as Scheele’s green and Schweinfurt green, and the pigments, which are termed in France vert Anglais. All these contain from 50 per cent to 58 cent of pure arsenious acid. These colours are employed for various purposes, among which may be mentioned artificial flowers and articles of dress, confectionery, pastry, sweets, toys, and the greens in wall-papers. From any one of these sources neuritis may be contracted, and it is less-known fact that arsenical poisoning has been contracted from drinking water impregnated with the poison from accidental if not natural causes. But the difficulty of discovering the cause of death from arsenic, which the “ Daily Mail ” puts forward as a new source of uncertainty in the investigation, need not be entertained. In the case of a death resulting immediately from the taking of arsenic in one fatal dose, the “Mail” sees no difficulty in finding the deposit; but in cases of persons poisoned by arsenic in beer “ it is known that the process takes almost a month in its operation, and that the action of th* l poison is therefore so slow that all traces may be lost.” Our contemporary need not be alarmed on this account. Arsenic is an indestructible poison, and may be found in the body after many years. In one case—we are quoting a case that may be verified by application at any medical college—it was detected after the lapse of fourteen years.