No Physic With Our Food

That is ratber a dangerons proposition, put forth by tlie manufacturers of some of the patented or proprietary articles of food, that their products possess a superior wholesomeness because they contain a drug of some particular medicinal property. Phosliates, alum, lime, arseuic, calomel, etc, have their places as specitics for different diseases, and are invaluable medical remedies, eacli in its place. Butthey are not cure-alls. The physician who should prescribe either calomel, or strychinine, or rbubarb three times a day to man, woman and child, sick or well, because eitlier of such drugs is a well known remedy for some certain disease, vvould receivebut little honor f rom the fraternity and less practice from the community. No one will controvert this statement yet we tiod manufacturers of baking powders claiming superior hygienic virtue for their productions and urging their continuous use because they are alleged to carry the phosphate used in niaking them (a cheap substitute for cream of tartar, procured from tlie bones of dead animáis) into the food, although well aware, as they must be, of the tact that with the constant use of such article this drug must pass into our systems daily, no matter what may be our physical conditions or requirements, or whetber or not we may be suffering from some ailment whèrein the use of such drug would be positively detrimental. Both alum and phosphates are useful medicaments in certain diseases; but they should no more be taken indiscriminately day af ter day and without the prescription of a physician, than arsenic, aconite or calomel; indeed, there are conditions of the system. particularly with women, when the prudent physician would be loath to permit the use of lime pliosphates even as a medicine. The fallacy of this claim of the manufacturers of phosphatic baking powder will be apparent to all when the fact, well known to physicians, is stated, thitt in average health and with ordinary food the body gets more phosphates than are required or can be assimilated, as is evidenced by the tact that they are constantly being expelled in the excretions, both solid and liquid; likewise the statement that it is necessary to add phosphates to tne baking povyder to restore to the flour those which have been lost in the milling, for it is true that flne ílour as at present made, actually contains a largër percentftge of phosphates than the grain of wheat itself . The object of baking powders is not to provide the body with a medicine, but simply to vesiculate or make light the mixture of flour, so as to render it wben baked easv of rnastication and perfectly digestible. The most celeDrated experts in the business have worked for the perfection of an article that should do tbis machanicallv, adding to or taking fiom the flour nothing, nor in any way effecting a change in its properties orconstituents. When this has been done the perfect leavening agent has been discovered. ïhe manufacturéis of the Koyal Baking Powder have succeeded in this so far as to make n leavening agent that vesiculates and raises the loaf most perfectly, and without changing the properties of the flour, while the residuum from it has been reduced to a minimum. The acid employed, hovvever, to produce this result is not Jhosphatic, but the acid of highly reïned cream of tarter, which, the health authorities agree, renders that powder perfectly pure and more reliable an.1 iealtnful than any other. The recent official tests show, on the other band, that the best the phosphatic baking powder makers can do is to produce an article that is one-lhird or more residuum or impurity. We want our food pure; especially do we not wish to take alum, lime and phosphates wiih it at the dictum of nanufacturers who may flnd it cheaper ;o claim a virtue for the impurities than to remove them.