Excerpt from Yale Medical Journal, Vol. 7: July 1900-June 1901 The medical testimony of the effects of antiseptics as used in food is conflicting. Laboratory experiments with some of them have failed to show any unfavorable result on the action of the various digestive ferments, and also when administered to cer tain of the lower animals. It is obviously a difficult problem to decide whether these chemical preservatives are injurious in small doses; indeed, it would seem impossible to reach a deci sion in the cases of greatest interest without experiments that would be entirely unjustifiable. Whatever may be the power of resistance in healthy individuals, it is scarcely conceivable that any prudent physician would sanction the use of milk con taining over fifty grains of boric acid per quart, or of oysters con taining even a greater proportion, in the cases of infants or inval ids. A healthy adult individual may use moderate doses of nico tine, alcohol and other poisonous drugs, with apparent immunity, and presumably he may be able also to escape injurious results from antiseptic drugs as they are used in foods, but surely this is no reason why invalids and the young should not be carefully protected from their action. Special care should be taken in the selection of milk and oysters, for they are of great impor tance in the sick room diet and are especially subject to this form of adulteration. It may be urged especially with regard to formaldehyde that its use is very recent and that we have little knowledge of its physiological action. What we do know about it indicates that it is a most powerful protoplasmic poison and fully justifies great caution in its use. As to the future of the use of antiseptics in food it would seem that they have taken a safe and conservative stand who advocate legal restrictions to the extent of requiring the char acter and amount of antiseptics used to be announced on the label of the preparation. This plan does not restrict the use of a good thing if their use be good, it gives the opportunity to avoid their use where there is good reason to do so, and it affords a definite ground on which to base prosecutions in cases of violations of the law. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.