He who loves cayenne, as a rule is fond of curry-powder; and here also the poisonous oxide is to be found in large quantities. Some years ago, a certain amiable duke recommended the labouring population, during a season of famine, to take a pinch of this condiment every morning before going to work, as "warm and comforting to the stomach." If they had followed his advice, thirteen out of every twenty-eight persons would have imbibed a slow poison. Those who are in the habit of using curry, generally take it in considerable quantities, and thus the villanous falsification plays a more deadly part than even in cayenne-pepper. Imagine a man for years pertinaciously painting his stomach with red lead! We do not know whether medical statistics prove that paralysis prevails much among "Nabobs;" but of this we may be sure, that there could be no more fruitful source of it than the two favourite stimulants we have named.
The great staple articles of food are not subject to adulteration in the same proportion as many other articles of minor demand. We need scarcely say that meat is exempt so long as it remains in the condition of joints; but immediately it is prepared in any shape in which its original fibre and form can be hidden, the spirit of craft begins to work. The public have always had certain prejudices against sausages and polonies, for example; and, if we are to believe a witness examined on oath before the Smithfield Market Commissioners in 1850, not without reason. It is a very old joke that there are no live donkeys to be found within twenty miles of Epping; but if all the asinine tribe in England were to fall victims to the chopping-machine, we question if they could supply the _à-la-mode_, polony, and sausage establishments. Mr. J. Harper, for instance, being under examination, upon being asked what became of the diseased meat brought into London, replied:--
"It is purchased by the soup-shops, sausage-makers, the _à-la-mode_ beef and meat-pie shops, &c. There is one soup-shop, I believe, doing five hundred pounds per week in diseased meat. This firm has a large _foreign_ trade [thank goodness!]. The trade in diseased meat is very alarming, as anything in the shape of flesh can be sold at about one penny per pound, or eightpence per stone.... I am certain that if one hundred carcases of cows were lying dead in the neighbourhood of London, I could get them all sold within twenty-four hours: _it don't matter what they died of_."