Page:The food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa.djvu/40

Rh as food. The sooner this practice of drug taking under cover of diet comes to an end the better it will be for the national health.

Formerly Venetian red, umber, peroxide of iron, and even brick-dust, were employed to produce a cheaper article, but modern science and legislation combined have rendered such practices almost impossible. As early as the reign of George III. an Act was passed, providing that, "if any article made to resemble cocoa shall be found in the possession of any dealer, under the name of 'American cocoa' or 'English cocoa' or any other name of cocoa, it shall be forfeited, and the dealer shall forfeit £100." Yet this Act was allowed to become so much a dead letter that in 1851 the Lancet published the analysis of fifty-six preparations sold as "cocoa," of which only eight were free from adulteration. In some of the "soluble cocoas," the adulteration was as high as 65 per cent., potato starch in one case forming 50 per cent, of the sample. The majority of the samples were found to be coloured with mineral or