168 
THE AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
the profession was personally interested, and that its members should provide 
the wherewithal for what was considered to be their own protection. We 
believe this view to be untenable, and that the prosecution of unauthorised 
vendors of poisons is a matter of general, rather than of professional, interest. 
This position being forced upon the profession, however, it behoves its members 
to be up and doing in making the best of it. Therefore, we most heartily 
support Mr Tompsitt’s proposal. It is said that pharmacists are often 
neglectful of their best interests, as witness the fact that quite recently the 
Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was forced to discontinue its opposition 
to the registration of objectionable trades marks owing to lack of funds. 
But we trust that the endeavours of the Board will not be hampered in the 
important work to which we particularly refer for the like reason. It may be 
hoped that the Government will presently be persuaded to subsidise the fund, 
whose establishment we advocate, if not to altogether relieve the subscribers. 
We know of nothing more likely to bring about this “ consummation devoutly 
to be wished ” than the prompt and general acceptation of Mr. Tompsitt’s 
proposition, and the consequent energetic action of the profession on its own 
account. We shall be happy to receive subscriptions towards the fund in 
question. 
THE BRITISH PHARMACOPOEIA AND SWEET SPIRITS OF 
NITRE. 
The Pharmaceutical Journal of 27th February gives a full report of the trial, 
at Liverpool, of a chemist charged with “ selling two ounces of sweet spirits of 
nitre which was not of the nature, substance, and quality of the article 
demanded by the purchaser.” In view of the recent publication of the Pharma- 
copoeia for 1885, the particulars of this case present several features of interest 
to Australasian as well as to British pharmacists. For the prosecution, Dr. J. 
Campbell Brown, the analyst, said that he found the sample submitted to him 
(and which, it was proved, had been purchased at the defendant’s shop) three- 
fifths of the recognised minimum strength, according to the British Pharma- 
copoeia of 1885, and it was sought to prove that, as the work mentioned had 
been produced in compliance with and under the sanction of authority of certain 
Acts of Parliament, and was “ intended to afford the members of the medical 
profession and those engaged in the preparation of medicine throughout the 
British Empire one uniform standard guide, whereby the nature and composi- 
tion of substances to be used in medicine may be ascertained and determined,” 
that an offence had been committed under the Sale of Foods and Drugs Act 
of 1875. For the defence, it was contended that there were two articles well 
known to the drug trade and to the public — one prepared, according to the old 
London Pharmacopoeia, from a certain formula, and answering certain tests, and 
another called spirit of nitrous ether, mentioned in the British Pharmacopoeia, 
prepared from different ingredients by a totally different process, and answering 
different tests ; and that there was no statute which prevented the preparation 
and sale of the former, which had a large sale under the name of “ sweet spirit of 
nitre,” which was the name used by the inspector when asking for the drug in 
question. In support of this latter view, Professor Attfield, one of the three 
editors of the Pharmacopoeia, after describing the difference between the two pre- 
parations, stated his opinion that the article supplied was of the nature, sub- 
stance, and quality of the article demanded by the purchaser when he asked for 
sweet spirit of nitre, and, further, that it was the article commonly and 
very largely demanded by the public, and that it would be a very 
