81 THE ANALYST. MAY, 1879. THE SALE OF FOOD AND DRUGS ACT. THE recent decision of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, h the case of Hoyle v . Hitchman, was given at suoh a late date that we could not comment upon it, although we published the judgment itself and a considerable portion of the argumants in the special supplement which was issued with our last number, It is fitting, therefore, that we should now make a few remarks upon a decision, which, as the Times says, “ has laid a troublesome phantasm which was disturbing the operation of a very useful statute,” although we, no less than the Times, dl are grateful.” We have uniformly expressed the opinion that this was the decision the Court of Queen’s Bench would arrive at, and it is the more satisfactory to know that it was given not merely on the particular case at issue, (which was one of adulterrhd milk containing 25 per cent.of water) ; but,that previous judicial remarks and so called decisions were fully reviewed and referred to in the judgment. Some of the remarks made by Mr. Justice Mellor are of such importance that it is worth while to draw special attention to them : he said, “if the meaning of the enactment is that the offence cannot be completed without its being to the prejudice of the purchaser, it is hmdly possible that the offence should be brought home to anyone ;” and further, “it would be strange, indeed, if all these provisions were to be made nugatory by a construction which would in effect come to this-that proceedings could only be taken by private individuals ;” and again, ( ( I cannot bring my mind to the conclusion that in such a case as this the offence is less complete merely because the money with which the purchase was made was not the money of the purchaser, which must be wholly immaterial to the seller, and cannot affect the offence he has committed.’’ The judgment, therefore, is given entirely on the broad ground that if the decision of Sir James Ingham were allowed to stand, the Act would be rendered entirely inoperative, which certainly was not the intention of the legislature at the time the Act was passed.Mr. Justice Mellor, in his judgment, also points out one thing on which no special stress had been previously laid, vie., that in the Court of Sessions in Scotland, out of seven judges two dissented altogether from the well-known decision, and two others appear to have declined to adopt the view of the remaining three in reference to the “prejudice” question, so that the majority of the Scotch Court was actually of the same opinion as Justices Mellor and Lush.The introduction of an Amending Bill into the House of Commons, and its reference to a Select Committee, affords us a suitable opportunity to refer to two or three other points in connection with the working of the Act.We have often pointed out before that defences to prosecutions, under the Sale of Food Act, very frequently take the form of detecting flaws of some sort or other in the Act itself. When a man is charged with a misdemeanour of an ordinary kind, the ingenuity of his professional advisers naturally takes advantage of every opportunity of proving him technically innocent rather than guilty ; but it is somewhat unusual to find the actual meaning, or intention, or scope of an Act of Parliament challenged, unless the prosecution is taking place under the Sale of Food Act.Yet anyone who would tltke the trouble, a,@82 THE ANALYST.we have, to examine the records of disputed cases during the last four years, would be struok with the fact that in a very large number of cases the defence hams been-not that the analysis was incorrect-not that the sample had been purchased from any other shop-not that the inspector had tampered with it ; but in some ingenious way seeking to prove that the prescribed formalities of dividing, labelling, sealing, and so on, had not been fully complied with, Some of the trade journals who have adopted a virulent tone towards Public Analysts generally, say that disputed cases are frequently due to analytical blunders; but it is a singularly significant fact that out of some 50,000 gamples examined by Public Analysts during the last four years, only somewhere about one per thousand has been sent to the chemists at Somerset House for a second analysis, and this, notwithstanding the well-known fact that in certain cases, such for instance as milk, those chemists have adopted a standa'rd lower than is justified by the experienoe of Public Analysts themselves, or by the large -number of analyses published by chemists of repute ; and it is still more significant that in about half the cases which have QctualIy gone to Somerset House the chemists there have confirmed the results of the Public Analysts, mid of the remaining half of the cases their report has frequently been simply equivalent to giving the benefit of the doubt to the vendor-that is, they were unable, owing to the lapse of time or from some other cause, to say whether the sample was adulterated or not.Such a state of things as this is satisfactory as regards the Analysts themselves, and as regards the Queen's Bench decision ; but when viewed in connection with the proceedings taken when the 1875 Act was before parliament, and the character of some of the clauses in the Bill now before the Select Committee, it may have a still more important bearing.It will be in the recollection of most of our readers that when the present Act was introduced into the House of Commons, after the report of the 1874 Select Committee had been presented, a suggestion was made on the part of our Society that a schedule, defining the strength and composition of certain articles, should be introduced into the Act.This schedule was not drawn or put forward with a view to reach any abnormal standard of either quality or purity in the articles referred to in it; but after long consideration and full discussion by members of the Society, it was go arranged as to cover every fair natural variation in the quality of those articles, so that for instance, no genuine milk, derived from a healthy cow, should be condemned under it, while for the same reason the better class of articles, whether milk, or cocoa, or coffee, would allow of some considerable amount of dilution or adulteration before they would reach the limits of the standard fixed. On the other hand an endeavour was made to fix the standard sufficiently high to prevent absolutely reckless sophistication by other means than the mere addition of foreign ingredients, that is, to prevent the produce of starved and diseased cows from being passed off on the public as genuine milk, and it is precisely on such points as these that the schedule to the Act w&s most needed, and that the so-called protection intended to be afforded by the Inland Revenue Chemists has proved to be worse than useless.Viewed in the abstract, the proposition of the Society simply amounted to this : that whereas certain substances, as sold, differ slightly in quality even when genuino ; and whereas certain tradesmen, less scrupulous than the majority, taking advantage of this fact, were in the habit of reducing the goods they sold still further, that, therefore, this schedule (with any alterations which might be made in it) should be taken to dehe what was the lowest strength of any substance permitted to be sold as an article of food unlem that substace were labelled as a mixture. The adoption of some suchTHE ANALYST.83 schedule as this, even if the figures suggested by the Society had not been followed in their integrity, would, in our opinion, have rendered the Act much simpler, and it would certainly have obviated all necessity for referring to such a point as the “prejudice of the purchaser,” because a minimum strength being given in every case it is practically certain that every shopkeeper would work as nearlyas he could to that minimum strength, unless he secured an increased price for an article of better quality.The Act being thus rendered simple and much more effectual, tradesmen, instead of being in doubt as they are now as to what is legal, would have had a certain defined standard to work to, and thus all dispute as to what was and what was not adulteration would have been prevented, because a legal standard having once been fixed there would practically have been no difference between the results obtained by one Analyst and another on any given sample. However, in 1875, the opinion of the legislature was adverse to any such schedule, and consequently the views of the Society were passed over, and until the introduc- tion of the present Bill, which bears the names of Messrs.Anderson, Taylor, and Whitwell, there has been no attempt to give any schedule of any kind.Now, however, one is introduced relating to articles as to which a standard is specially needed, and from the discussion which took place before the Select Committee to whom the Bill was referred, it seems likely that this partial schedule, as to spirits only, will be adopted. Although the Committee’s Report is not pnblished, yet we understand that they will advise that all spirits, except gin, be allowed to be sold at 25 U.P., and gin at 35 U.P.Should this prove to be the case it will be, in more respects than one, a satisfactory step, because it will not only be the first adoption of the principle of definite standards, but it will relieve Public Analysts of a clifficulty which has for some time past prevented any satisfactory certificates from being returned in reference to spirits.Milk is the substance which, after spirits, most requires that a standard should be fixed for it, but here we could scarcely expect at present to meet with uniformity of opinion ; without going over old ground, it is notorious that there is a difference of several per cent. between Analysts and the Somerset House Chemists. Our experience, and it is by no means small-since Public Analysts examined during 1878 more than 5,000 samples of milk-goes fax to confirm the standard adopted by the Society some years ago, and we bdieve it is true that Mr.Bell and his coadjutors are gradually seeing their way to raise their figures slowly though steadily to those adopted by the Society. But leaving this moot point, it certainly seems to us that drugs might fairly have been considered.worthy of a place in this Amendment Bill, and that, if a standard were to be fixed for spirits, tlie Pharmacopaeia might also have been taken as a standard for drugs. The subject was mentioned before the Committee, though not by this Society ; but we learn that the Committee appear not to see their way at present to acceFt either the Pharmacopoeia or any other standard as being a fit and proper standard for c‘u.u,os.Therefore, Public Analysts will have to work as hitherto, according to their own judgment, guided by the information giveu in the Phmmacopceia, and using their cliscretion in each case as to wlietlier a sample should be returned as adulterated or not. This seems to us specially unfortunate-no less so to the chemists and druggists than to the Analysts, because both are still left in the sitme position of uncertainty.We cannot at all agree with the opinion expressed by Mr. Bell on this point, when he stated that his objection to the Pharmacopceia as a standard was that every Analyst would use it as a ]lard and fast line, nnd that before such a standard as that was taken itl ought to be But a singular anomaly will yet remain in the Act.84 THE ANALYST.referred to the Pharmaceutical Society to know if they had anything to say to it. Broadly, this means, if it has any meaning at all, that Mr. Bell thinks that the Pharmaceutical Society, after having put forward the Pharmacopeia for yeam as their recognised standard, are, now that a proposal is made to test their goods according to it, to be asked first whether they wish to alter their standard.We can scarcely believe such an idea could have entered the minds of the Pharmaceutical Society, but rather that some idea as to the wholesale adulteration of drugs must have been prevailing in Mr. Bell’s mind, in reference, for instance, to such drugs as the sulphate of quinine? recently sent to India. We are quite certain that both parties would be in a far better position, with a definite standard laid down, than they are now, in cases in which a drug is found to be short of the Pharmacopaia, strength. We understand that the Committee also reoommend that prosecutions should be instituted within twenty-eight days from the purchase of the samples, and also that samples for analysis may be purchased in L L open places of publio resort,” which we suppose may be taken to mean streets and markets, in addition to the shops only which Bome magistrates have held are the only places at which they may now be purchased. We cannot give the Bill in its amended form in our present number, but next month we hope to do so, and shall probably have oocasion to refer to one or two other points likely to be brought up by it.