Though we have already, in different parts of this work, occasionally reminded the housekeeper and cook of the fatal consequences attending coppers and saucepans not being properly tinned, yet we shall here enter on a particular inquiry into the nature and property of culinary poisons, for the information and satisfaction of those who may wish to have a more perfect knowledge of such important matters.

By the use of copper vessels for dressing our food, we are daily exposed to the danger of poison; and even the very air of a kitchen, abounding with oleaginous and saline particles, disposes those vessels to solution before they are used. Copper, when handled, yields an offensive smell; and, if touched with the tongue, has a sharp pungent taste, and even excites a nausea. Verdigrise is nothing but a solution of this metal by vegetable acids, and it is well known, that a very small quantity of this solution will produce cholics, vomitings, intolerable thirst, universal convulsions, and other dangerous symptoms. If these effects, and the prodigious divisibility of this metal, be considered, there can be no doubt of its being a violent and subtle poison. Water, by standing some time in a copper vessel, becomes impregnated with verdigrise, as may be demonstrated by throwing into it a small quantity of any volatile alkali, which will immediately tinge it with a paler or deeper blue, in proportion to the rust contained in the water. Vinegar, apple-sauce, greens, oil, grease, butter, and almost every other kind of food, will extract the verdi-grise in a great degree. Some people imagine, that the ill effects of copper are prevented by its being tinned, which indeed is the only preventative in that case; but the tin, which adheres to the copper, is so extremely thin, that it is soon penetrated by the verdigrise, which insinuates itself through the pores of that metal, and appears green upon the surface.

Verdigrise, is one of the most violent poisons in nature; and yet, rather than quit an old custom, the greater part of mankind are content to swallow some of this poison every day. Our food receives its quantity of poison in the kitchen, by the use of copper pans and dishes; the brewer mingles poison in your beer, by boiling it in copper; salt is distributed to the people from copper scales covered with verdigrise; our pickles are rendered green by infusion of copper; the pastry-cook bakes our tarts in copper patty-pans; but confections and syrups have greater powers of destruction, as they are set over a fire in copper vessels which have not been tinned, and the verdigrise is plentifully extracted by the acidity of the composition. After all, though we do not swallow death in asingie dose, yet it is certain that a quantity of poison, however small, which is repeated with every meal, must produce more fatal effects than is generally believed.

Bell-metal kettles are frequently used in boiling cucumbers for pickling, in order to make them green ; but this is a practice as absurd as it is dangerous. If the cucumbers acquire any additional greenness by the use of these kettles, they can only derive it from the copper, of which they are made; and this very reason ought to be sufficient to overturn so dangerous a practice.

According to some writers, bell-metal is a composition of tin and copper, or pewter and copper, in the proportion of twenty pounds of pewter, or twenty-three pounds of tin, to one hundred weight of copper. According to others, this metal is made in the proportion of one thousand pounds of copper to two or three hundred pounds of tin, and one hundred and fifty pounds of brass. Spoons, and other kitchen utensils are fre quently made of a mixed metal, called alchemy, or, as it is vulgarly pronounced, ochimy. The rust of this metal, as well as that of the former, is highly pernicious.

The author of a tract entitled, Serious Reflections attend-ing the Use of Copper Vessels, published in London in 1755, asserts, that the great frequency of palsies, apoplexies, madness, and all the frightful train of nervous disorders which suddenly attack us, without our being able to account for the cause, or which gradually weaken our vital faculties, are the pernicious effects of this poisonous matter, taken into the body insensibly with our victuals, and thereby intermixed with our blood and juices.

However this may be, certain it is, that there have been innumerable instances of the pernicious consequences of eating food dressed in copper vessels, not sufficiently cleaned from this rust. On this account the senate of Sweden, about the year 1753, prohibited copper vessels, and ordered that novessels, except such as were made of iron, should be used in their fleets and armies. But if copper vessels must be still continued, every cook and good housewife should be particularly careful in keeping them clean and well tinned, and should suffer nothing to remain in them longer than is absolutely necessary for the purposes of cookery.

Lead is a metal easily corroded, especially by the warm steams of acids, such as vinegar, cider, lemon-juice, Rhenish wine, etc. and this solution, or salt of lead, is a slow and insidious, though certain poison. The glazing of all our common brown pottery ware is either lead or lead ore; if black, it is a lead ore, with a small proportion of manganese, which is a species of iron ore; if yellow, the glazing is lead ore, and appears yellowish by having some pipe or white clay under it. The colour of the common pottery ware is red, as the vessels are made of the same clay as common bricks. These vessels are so porous, that they are penetrated by all salts acid or alkaline, and are unfit for retaining any saline substances. They are improper, though too often used, for preserving sour fruits or pickles. The glazing of such vessels is corroded by the vinegar : for, upon evaporating the liquor, a quantity of the salt of lead will be found at the bottom. A sure way of judging whether the vinegar or other acid, have dissolved part of the glazing, is by their becoming vapid, or losing their sharpness, and acquiring a sweetish taste by standing in them for some time, in which case the contents must be thrown away as pernicious.