Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Adulteration, Narcotics, Nutrition, Disease, Crime

    Argues that 'this wholesale adulteration' has the particular benefit that since 'drugs are so diluted, and poison so mixed up with more innocuous ingredients', it becomes difficult to use them successfully to poison oneself. Points out that 'Death would much more probably ensue from a pennyworth of peppermint, or a lollipop or two'. Expresses hope that 'these facts' will be spread widely by the press and dramatists, and then considers the effects of adulterated (and therefore weakened) poisons on melodrama: it would, for example, thwart villany, and give rise to plots where characters were murdered with 'an adulterated dinner'. Proceeds to discuss how novelists could 'give publicity' to the truths of adulteration, including the construction of plots 'wherein all the troubles and the torments of the heroine and hero might be brought on or cleared off by a judicious introduction of adulterated articles'. Concludes by noting the Lancet's exposure of the adulteration of tea, coffee, and milk.