nd, to my
knowledge, such a quantity of actual metallic tin, tinned iron, or
solder as, from the point of view of health, can have any significance
whatever.

The largest amount of tin I ever detected in actual solution in food was
in some canned soup, containing a good deal of lemon juice. It amounted
to only three-hundredths of a grain in a half pint of the soup as sent
to table. Now, Christison says that quantities of 18 to 44 grains of the
very soluble chloride of tin were required to kill dogs in from one to
four days. Orfila says that several persons on one occasion dressed
their dinner with chloride of tin, mistaking it for salt. One person
would thus take not less than 20 to 30 grains of this soluble compound
of tin. Yet only a little gastric and bowel disturbance followed, and
from this all recovered in a few days. Pereira says that the dose of
chloride of tin as an antispasmodic and stimulant is from 1/16 to 1/2 a
grain repeated two or three times daily. Probably no article of canned
food, not even the most acid fruit, if in a condition in which it can be
eaten, has ever contained, in an ordinary table portion, as much of a
soluble salt of tin as would amount to a harmless or useful medicinal
dose.

Metallic particles of tin are without any effect on man. A thousand
times the quantity ever found in a can of tinned food would do no harm.

Food as acid as say ordinary pickles would dissolve tin. Some
manufacturers once proposed using tin stoppers to their bottles of
pickles. But the tin was slowly dissolved by the acid of the vinegar.
These pickles, however, had a distinctly nasty "metallic" flavor. The
idea was abandoned. Probably any article of food containing enough tin
to disagree with the system would be too nasty to eat. Purchasers of
food may rest assured that the action taken by this firm would be that
usually followed. It is not to the interest of manufacturers or other
venders to offend the senses of purchasers, still less to do them actual
harm, even if no higher motive comes into force.

In the early days of canning, it is just possible that the use of
"spirits of salt" in soldering may have resulted in the presence of a
little stannous, plumbous, or other chloride in canned food; but such a
fault would soon be detected and corrected, and as a matter of fact,
resin-soldering is to my knowledge more generally employed--indeed, for
anything I know to the contrary, is exclusively employed--in cannin