ADULTERATION OF SPIRITS.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1172, 1 May 1874, Page 3

ADULTERATION OF SPIRITS.

As an illustration of tho wide-spread evil of the British liquor trade, we quote tlie following from the European Mail:— It is a singular and rather unsatisfactory circumstance that, with all the efforts we arc at present making to secure the purity ot our food, we arc allowing the deadliest form ofadultcra lion to flourish unchecked. While we are husy overhauling the milk-can and the bread-basket, the gin and whiskycasks escape scot-free, though the amount of mischief done by their contents is a hundred or a thousand fold greater than that which we are attempting to check. "When we arc daily deploring the extent and evils of national intemperance, it never occurs to us to ask how much of it may be produced, not by the amount of alcohol which is consumed, but by the vile ingredients which are consumed with it. It is inal tor of common knowledge that large quantities of the spirits sold by the Jess reputable class of publicans arc fearfully adulterated, and there is little difficulty in believing that some of the worst evils pf drunkenness —notably that species of savage madness which seem to be the more and more frequent attendant of it—are due to the deadly effects of the adulterants. Dr Shcppard, of the Colnej Hatch Asylum, who has for twelve years watched tho varieties of the alcoholic lunacy, asks whether alcohol is the real factor of this animal heat and dire insanity. lie affirms, on the authority of those who have given much time and study to the question that the liquors most constantly drunk, whisky and gin, arc pernicious not so much on account of the alcohol they contain as by reason of the pernicious matters associated with them. They are largely mixed with amylic or fusel oil, ingredients which cause for the most part the miserable consequences of habitual EOttishness." Dr Shcppard asks why cannot we put a stop to this fatal kind of adulteration ; and the answer is easy though disheartening enough. It is because we have begun the reform in the traffic in intoxicating liquors, more nostra, at the wrong end ; and because apparently, we think it a little matter

that men should be allowed to supply what is little better than " poisoned poison" wholesale to the people so long as we have restricted " the hours" within which it may be done.