April 15, 1909] 



NA TURE 



191 



rapidly horizontally, but by this method I could only 

 record in each experiment during the time of the 

 movement of the glass plate — about one second. By 

 the gramophone, records of vocal sounds might be 

 taken during a period of three minutes. 



\n inspection of the curves so obtained of a voice 

 or of an orchestra only makes the performance of 

 a gramophone more wonderful and more difficult to 

 understand. We see a long series of waves of various 

 forms which the eye cannot follow ; but when these 

 waves appeal to the ear, then music starts into life. 

 Each sense has its own beat. 



John G. McKendrick. 



THE POISONS OF THE PHARMACY ACT. 



ONE of the minor legislative achievements of last 

 session was an amendment of the Poisons and 

 Pharmacy .\cts. So far as poisons are concerned, 'it 

 may be noted that these .'Vets restrict the facilities for 

 obtaining certain substances which experience has 

 shown to be often responsible for fatalities, whether 

 by accident or by intentional administration. Besides 

 the commoner violent poisons — the arsenic and strych- 

 nine of the wilful poisoner, the prussic acid and 

 carbolic acid of the suicide — there are milder varieties 

 of toxic substances which may lead to fatal results 

 through ignorant or careless usage, and which should 

 therefore not lightly be dealt out to ignorant or care- 

 less users. Such, for instance, are the narcotics, as 

 morphine and sulphonal ; the emetics, e.g. tartar 

 emetic; and the abortifacients, such as ergot and 

 savin. 



What is a poison? Precise definition is difficult. 

 Very largely it is a matter of quantity ; most medicines 

 are poisonous if taken in excess. Personal idiosyn- 

 cracy and immunisation are also factors. The 

 proverb " One man's meat is another man's poison " 

 contains at least the half-truth characteristic of 

 proverbs ; and the Styrian arsenic-eaters, as Sir Henry 

 Roscoe showed nearly fifty years ago, can easily with- 

 stand doses of arsenic which would be fatal to ordinary 

 people. 



In the Act before us the legislature defines its 

 poisons by enumerating them. To toxicologists and 

 pharmacists the list is no doubt familiar enough. To 

 other readers, however, it may be of interest to glance 

 at the list of articles now included in the schedule of 

 poisons. These, as explained below, are only to be 

 sold under certain specified conditions. 



Part i. of the schedule is concerned generally with 

 the more active poisons, upon the sale of which the 

 more stringent restrictions are naturally placed. The 

 buyer must be known to the seller, or must be intro- 

 duced to bim bv a third person known to both ; the 

 sale must be recorded in a special book and the entry 

 signed by the purchaser, and the purpose for which 

 the drug is required must be stated. 



.Arsenic, alkaloids, and the poisonous, cyanides form 

 most of this first division. Several of the alkaloids — 

 aconite, aconitine, atropine, belladonna, strychnine, 

 and morphine — are specifically named ; but there is 

 also a general category of " all poisonous vegetable 

 alkaloids," which brings in any not otherwise 

 enumerated. Coca, cantharides, corrosive sublimate, 

 tartar emetic, ergot, picrotoxin, and savin complete 

 the list as regards part i. 



Part ii. of the schedule contains a list of articles 

 which (i) are to be sold only by registered chemists, 

 and (2) must be labelled as poisons when sold. It 

 includes oil of almonds (unless deprived of prussic 

 acid), antimonial wine, carbolic acid and its homo- 

 logues, chloral, chloroform, digitalis, the iodide, 



.NO. 2059, VOL. 80] 



sulphocyanide, chloride, and oxides of mercury; 

 poppies, strophanthus and sulphonal, together with 

 all preparations which contain a poison within the 

 meaning of the Pharmacy Acts and are not otherwise 

 dealt with. 



Most of the foregoing articles are well-known 

 poisons, and the reasons for including them are, 

 perhaps, sufiiciently obvious. But a few notes upon 

 the less familiar of them may not be without interest. 



One of the most noteworthy is the drug coca. This, 

 the source of the alkaloid cocaine, consists of the 

 dried leaves of Erytliroxylon coca, a shrub which 

 flourishes on the slopes of the .'\ndes. It has beeni 

 used as a nerve stimulant by the Peruvian and 

 Bolivian natives from time immemorial. Furnished 

 with a small stock of the leaves to chew, they will 

 work or travel without food from morning until night. 

 As there is no appreciable amount of nourishment in 

 the leaves, the sustaining effect is regarded as prob- 

 ably due to the nerves of . the stomach being locally 

 benumbed by the drug, thus preventing the feeling of 

 hunger. Although habitual excessive use of coca 

 brings on insomnia, dropsy, and death,, yet a single 

 large dose is said, in the case of the natives, to give- 

 a sensation of peculiar physical beatitude. Joyous 

 visions and brilliant phantasmagoria are recorded as 

 the result of a very large dose in one case. ■ On 

 Europeans, however, the action appears to be 

 curiously different from this, fear and terror rather 

 than joy having been noted in numerous .cases of 

 coca poisoning. * . - ' ■ ' ' ' ,' 



■ Cantharides, the Spanish blistering fly, is the dried 

 beetle Cantharis vesicatdria. ' It comes chiefly from 

 Spain, Italy, and Russia. Internally, the drug acts 

 as a powerful irritant, with a peculiar direction to the 

 urinary and genital organs ; externally it is used as a 

 blister and rubefacient. 



Ergot is the sclerotium of a fungus, Claviceps 

 purpurea, arising in the ovary of the rye plant. It is 

 scarcely a poison in (he ordinary sense of the word, as 

 most persons — the exceptions being women in 

 pregnancy — can take large doses without fatal effect. 

 Nevertheless, epidemics of poisoning on the Continent 

 have been ascribed to the use of rye-bread con- 

 taminated with the fungus. Medicinally it produces 

 contraction of those muscles which act involuntarily, 

 and slows down the action of the heart. 



A poison which is said to have been used as a hop- 

 substitute in malt liquors has a place in the schedule. 

 It is picrotoxin, a bitter, crystalline substance obtained 

 from the berries of Cocculus indicus {Anamirta pani- 

 culata). The- drug is a potent poison, producing con- 

 vulsions and violent peristalsis. Savin has been much 

 used in uterine affections. It consists of the dried 

 tops of the shrub Juniperns sabina, Lin., a native of 

 southern Europe and the United States. The volatile 

 " oil of savin " obtained from it is a powerful local 

 irritant which has been employed, often with fatal 

 results, in producing criminal abortion. Strophanthus, 

 the seeds of S. Komhi, is notable as the source of the 

 KomM arrow-poison, used in Senegambia, Guinea, 

 and other parts of Africa. For the rest, space allows 

 only a brief mention of sulphonal, which is a soporific 

 drug (dimethyl-methane-diethyl sulphone) synthesised 

 from acetone and mercaptan. Its narcotic action is 

 usually quiet, without disagreeable after-effects ; but 

 chronic poisoning and fatal results have frequently 

 accrued from long-continued and injudicious use of 

 the drug. 



A large number of deaths by accident and suicide 

 are yearly attributable to poisoning by mineral acids. 

 Restrictions are therefore now placed by the Act upon 

 the sale of hydrochloric, sulphuric and nitric acids, as 

 also of soluble oxalates. These articles must be 



