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The circumstances comprehended under this head certainly deserve to be ranked amongst the more powerful causes, which have operated in affecting the reputation of many medicinal substances. The Peruvian Bark fell into total discredit in the year 1779, from its inability to cure the ague; and it was afterwards discovered to have been adulterated with bark of an inferior species; indeed Sydenham speaks of the adulteration of this substance before the year 1678; he tells us that he had never used to exceed two drachms of Cinchona in the cure of any intermittent, but that of late the drug was so inert, rotten, and adulterated, it became necessary to increase its dose to one, two, or three ounces. The subject is copious and full of importance, and I have taken considerable pains to collect very fully, the various modes in which our remedies are thus deprived of their most valuable properties, and to suggest the best tests by which such frauds may be discovered. Very few practitioners have an idea of the alarming extent to which this nefarious practice is carried, or of the systematic manner in which it is conducted: there can be no doubt but that the sophistication of medicines has been practised in degree in all ages,^[122] but the refinements of chemistry have enabled the manufacturers of the present day, not only to execute these frauds with greater address, but unfortunately, at the same time, to vend them with less chance of detection. It will be scarcely credited, when I affirm that many hundred persons are supported in this metropolis by the art of adulterating drugs, besides a number of women and children who find ample employment and excellent profit in counterfeiting Cochineal with coloured dough, Isinglass with pieces of bladder and the dried skin of soles, and by filling up with powdered Sassafras the holes which are bored in spice and nutmegs, for the purpose of plundering their essential oils.