Coffee, microscopy, and the Lancet's Analytical Sanitary Commission.

Abstract

Coffee was the most frequently analysed commodity in the Lancet's Analytical Sanitary Commission's reports on adulteration published between 1851 and 1854. Techniques of sample collection and microscopical investigation developed to analyse coffee were applied to other foods and drinks by Arthur Hill Hassall, and his findings were instrumental in establishing the first parliamentary select committee to investigate food purity in 1855. The committee's recommendations formed the basis of the 1860 Act to Prevent the Adulteration of Food and Drink. Hassall's research in applied microscopy has been interpreted by historians as marking a critical point in the campaign to secure tighter food controls and as an example of a public health debate being transformed by the precise measurements of a dispassionate scientist. This article questions the objectivity with which the ASC selected foodstuffs for analysis, the superiority of microscopy over techniques of chemical analysis, and the extent to which coffee was an adulterated commodity in the middle of the nineteenth century.