ADULTERATION, the act of debasing a commercial com modity with the object of passing it off as or under the name of a pure or genuine commodity for illegitimate profit, or the substitu tion of an inferior article for a superior one, to the detriment of the purchaser. Although the term is mainly used in connection with the falsification of articles of food, drink or drugs, and is so dealt with in this article, the practice of adulteration extends to almost all manufactured products and even to unmanufactured natural substances. In its crudest forms, as old as commerce it self, it has progressed with the growth of knowledge and of science, and is, in its most modern developments, almost a branch —and that not the least vigorous one—of applied science. From the mere concealment of a piece of metal or a stone in a loaf of bread or in a lump of butter, a bullet in a musk bag or in a piece of opium, it has developed into the use of aniline dyes, of anti septic chemicals, of synthetic sweetening agents in foods, the manufacture of butter from coconuts, of lard from cotton-seed and of pepper from olive stones. Its growth and development has necessitated the employment of multitudes of scientific officers charged with its detection and the passing of numerous laws for its repression and punishment. While for all common forms of fraud the common law is in most cases considered strong enough, special laws against the adulteration of food have been found necessary in all civilized countries. A vigorous branch of chemical literature deals with it ; there exist scientific societies specially devoted to its study ; laboratories are maintained by governments with staffs of highly trained chemists for its detection ; and yet it not only develops and flourishes but becomes more general, if less virulent and dangerous to health.
There are numerous references to adulteration in the classics. Both in Rome and in Athens wine was often adulterated with colours and flavouring agents, and inspectors were charged with looking after it.
In England, so far back as the reign of John (1203), a procla mation was made throughout the kingdom as regards bread ; and in the following reign the statute (51 Hen. III. Stat. 6) entitled "the pillory and tumbrel" was framed for the express purpose of protecting the public from the dishonest dealings of bakers, vint ners, brewers, butchers and others. This statute is the first in which the adulteration of human food is specially noticed and prohibited; it seems to have been enforced with more or less rigour until 1709, when it was repealed.
Similar records have come down from the continental Euro pean countries. In 1390 an Augsburg wine-seller was sentenced to be led out of the city with his hands bound and a rope round his neck; in 1400 two others were branded and otherwise severely punished; in 1435 "were the taverner Christian Corper and his wife put in a cask in which he sold false wine, and then exposed in the pillory. The punishment was adjudged because they had roasted pears and put them into new sour wine, in order to sweeten the wine. Some pears were hung round their necks like unto a Paternoster." In Biebrich, on the Rhine, in 1482, a wine falsifier was condemned to drink six quarts of his own wine ; from this he died. In Frankfurt, casks in which false wine had been found were placed with a red flag on the knacker's cart, "the jailer marched before, the rabble after, and when they came to the river they broke the casks and tumbled the stuff into the stream." In France successive ordonnances from 1330 to 1672 forbade the mixing of two wines together under the penalty of a fine and the confiscation of the wine.