POISON IN GERMANY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5192, 12 November 1877, Page 3

POISON IN GERMANY.

The Berlin correspondent of the Manchester Examiner and Times writes :—“ Poison in daily life” are words which best describe the subject of most general discussion in Press and society here, I saw to-day in one of our many humorous weeklies a burlesque department called the “Gift Zeitung” the Poison Gazette. It purported to give a record of cases of death from the use of impure food, &c., with communications, ‘ advertisements, poetry, &c., all bearing in some way on the chief interest presented by the journal. It was very amusing, and yet the subject itself has long since passed into a very serious stage. X do not speak of counterfeit wines, which are so common that a joke about them would be impossible. It is stated that near Berlin —I could give the name of the place if there were no public prosecutor here—there are two champagne factories. A dish dear to the German taste is “ pflaumeumuss/’ a sort of stewed plums, thick, inky, and tart. On the market place it may he seen in barrels, and no good house-wife among the lower middle class could enjoy a dinner unless this detestible sauce flanked her fat roast goose. But the researches of the Sanitary Police have discovered that in the manufacture of pflauraeumuas great quantities of copper are used. One or two deaths and a great many cases of sickness have been traced back to it, and now the whole city has turned away from its favorite relish. Milk and butter, again, are articles of which the impurity is not exactly confined to Berlin. But the latest and most extraordinary discovery of poison was, of all places in the world, in the leather covering of babies’ carriages. It appears that common use is made of so-called American leather, a showy article, in the tiny vehicles, and not until a number of infants had been attacked in a mysterious way did it occur to the authorities or doctors to have the leather examined. The result was astounding. In the preparation of the varnish poisonous substances were used in such quantities that the infanta actually inhale a fatal odor while lying iu their ■waggons. Accordingly, the police entered on a campaign of extermination. The shops where the carriages are sold, the manufactories where they are made, were all visited, and sweeping confiscations were made. Whenever American leather was found it was condemned, and the inventor of it looked on as a species of Herod. Although the local police are in each case the executors of the law, the technical analyses and investigations have been completed by the Imperial Health Commission, a new body, which is abundantly proving its usefulness.