Treatise on the falsifications of food, and the chemical means employed to detect them : containing water, flour, bread ... pepper, mustard / by John Mitchell.

  • Mitchell, John, analytical chemist.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatise on the falsifications of food, and the chemical means employed to detect them : containing water, flour, bread ... pepper, mustard / by John Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    in such a case no apprehension of harm need be entertained, for the amount dissolved is so very minute that it can scarcely be detected by the most delicate test. Indeed, when we consider the length of time the tinning of a saucepan lasts, and that the greatest wear and tear it undergoes is in its cleansing, with whiting, sand or other sharp substanceXwe need be under very little apprehen- sion, even if tin were a poisonous metal, (which is far from probable), of contracting any deadly com- plaint by its continual passage into the system in such infinitessimal doses. Indeed, it has been proved that a tin-platter has been in constant use for two years without losing more than four grains of its original weight, and the greater part of this abraded during cleansing.* If we admit that as much as half had been taken into the system in a soluble state (a state in which, perhaps, none of it could possibly enter) we should only have two grains for the two years, so that only about .0026 of a grain of tin introduced daily into the system, an amount which, even if the metal were exceedingly poisonous, would do very little or no harm. Indeed, it seems to me that metallic tin is one of the most wholesome coatings that can possibly be provided for vessels employed in domestic economy. * Proust. b 2