This Treatise, as its title expresses, is intended to exhibit easy methods of detecting the fraudulent adulterations of food, and of other articles, classed either among the necessaries or luxuries of the table; and to put the unwary on their guard against the use of such commodities as are contaminated with substances deleterious to health.

Every person is aware that bread, beer, wine, and other substances employed in domestic economy, are frequently met with in an adulterated state: and the late convictions of numerous individuals for counterfeiting and adulterating tea, coffee, bread, beer, pepper, and other articles of diet, are still fresh in the memory of the public.

To such perfection of ingenuity has the system of counterfeiting and adulterating various commodities of life arrived in this country, that spurious articles are every where to be found in the market, made up so skilfully, as to elude the discrimination of the most experienced judges.