Drug Adulteration, Detection and Control in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Drug adulteration is equally important for the history of medicine, pharmacy, the pure sciences such as chemistry and physics, and social history. This is fully appreciated by Stieb whose book, in some measure, forms a companion volume to F. A. Filby's A History of Food Adulteration and Analysis, London, 1934. After a general introduction leading to the year 1820 (Accum's Treatise on Adulterations) Stieb devotes himself to the next eighty-six years, to 1906 (first United States pure food and drug legislation). Two main themes are developed separately: the rise of analytical methods (e.g. sensory tests and the application of physics, chemistry and microscopy), and the evolution of social controls. Each section on an analytical method is not, naturally enough, entirely concerned with British contributions alone though these are given adequate emphasis. The second theme-dealing entirely with Britain-covers such topics as the extent of adulteration practices (a horrifying picture), the attitudes of the medical and the pharmaceutical professions to the problem, the roles of the individual and of the government in reform, and the emergence of special societies and publications. The arrangement of the material has advantages in allowing an extended discussion of each topic and the inclusion of a considerable amount of information. Much of the value of the book lies in the fact that these full discussions on specific subjects will interest a wide variety of historians of the nineteenth century. Yet the author's breakdown of the material has allowed certain themes significant to the whole story-both the scientific and the social aspects-to become fragmented or even lost. It will not be irrelevant to indicate some topics which, in the reviewer's opinion, could have helped to link together the features of the story related by Stieb. A clear indication of developments in medical, chemical and pharmaceutical education, and, in particular, of the growth of the one discipline intimately connected with adulteration-pharmacognosy-would have brought many threads together. When the story of British pharmacognosy is fully told it will throw much light on the evolution of medical and pharmaceutical sciences. Through the efforts of A. T. Thomson, Jonathan Pereira and Robert Bentley-all teachers at the Pharmaceutical Society's school from 1842-1887-as well as many personalities outside the academic world, pharmacognosy became an independent subject distinct from the existing wide-ranging materia medica courses which included therapeutics. These forty-five years saw the steady development of pharmacognosy as a research-orientated subject with much emphasis on …