POISONS WE ARE ALWAYS EATING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 172, 7 December 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

POISONS WE ARE ALWAYS EATING

ASTONISHING FACTS ABOUT OUR PARE. When the doctor told me he was prescribing prussic acid for the pain in my stomach (writes a contributor to a Home paper), I said I would rather keep the pain than take such a poison. "You need not have the slightest fear," he assured me. "Why, you eat poisons every day. When the Chinese want to commit suicide, one of their favorite plans is to take half a cup of salt." "Common salt?"

"Yes. In large quantities common salt is a violent irritant. It sets us severe inflammation of the stomach, and kills as truly as arsenic. "Saltpetre, that colors bacon and corned beef an attractive red, is a powerful poison. One ounce has killed a person in three hours. Many people have been poisoned by this.salt.

"You must know that your Christmas pudding and the icing of your wedding cake are incomplete unless flavored with bitter almonds. I am not sure how many bitter almonds it takes to kill a man, but they contain a good deal of this prussic acid that you object to. "Oxalic acid, with which foolish people so often commit suicide, is the salt which gives rhubarb and sorrel their pleasant flavor. It is a violently irritant and dreadfully painful poison.

"Need I tell you that caffein, the exhilarating principle of coffee and tea, is a poison? "In nearly all our condiments we cat, poison. The oils of nutmeg, cloves, black pepper, cinnamon, peppermint, carraway, horse radish, thyme, etc., arc all poisonous in large doses. Black pepper contains a fiery, volatile oil, capable of burning a hole in your stomach, if it were not moved on; while its piperine is ji sure poison. Cayenne pepper, or capsicum, is still more irritant.

"But. besides poisons which we take from choice, there are others which it is impossible to avoid swallowing in these days of complex feeding. Arsenic is a vi'ry (.'(.million ingredient in beer, jam, sweets, etc.. made with glucose. Fortunately, the liver acts more or less as a hltev. and save us from serious consequences. "Have you sometimes noticed how hard your salted fish is? The kipper and bloater, nowadays, often give you indigestion, because they are 'preserved' with formaldehyde, an injurious poison.

MAKING PRUSSIC ACID. "A most curious fact is that all food contains the elements of poison, and in our body poisons are manufactured from these. •'For instance, meat, fish, cheese and milk are composed of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Take away the last, and you have prtissic acid. •'We do not manufacture prussic acid, it is true. But in every stomach in the world fermentation goes on just as in a brewery, and the poisonous carbonic acid is made in large quantities. If you breathed a few days' output of carbonic acid gas, you would inevitably die. "Sulphuretted hydrogen is one of the most deadly gases known, yet in every stomach it is made at one time or another. "In the stomach all food is converted into what we call 'peptone,' and if a very small quantity of this found its way into the blood, it would kill as surely as prussic acid."