Featured on PDR in the collection A Treatise on Adulteration of Food and Culinary Poisons (1820)

From the 2008 Chinese milk-tainting scandal to last year's "Horsegate" in the UK, the adulteration of food has been in the news a fair bit recently - but, as this book is testament to, it's a far from recent phenomenon. This groundbreaking work - written in English by a German scientist named Frederik Accum who lived in London from 1793 to 1821 - marked the beginning of an awareness of need for food safety oversight. Accum was the first person to tackle the subject and to reach a wide audience through his activities. His book, controversial at the time, found a wide audience and sold well - a thousand copies in the first month - and a second edition (featured here) was published in the…