THE AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
241 
For the last — the “ bonne bouche ” — the pharmacy was reserved, a little 
place, the only one in the township, but quite sufficient to meet all demands, 
packed from floor to ceiling with drugs, specialties, and “ toilet requisites.” 
The most melancholy employe in the place was the man who did the drugs. 
His employer, by his admirable pluck and energy, had long since dropped 
the small style of doing business, and possessed himself of an extensive tract 
of land, with hill and dale, ferntree gully and forest, on which to build him 
a house — a veritable “ rus in urbe ** — and in which to enjoy well-merited repose 
when the time came. 
After the many “ slow ” places I had met with in Victoria this last experience 
was an interesting proof that to the chemist, as well as to men of sound faith, 
“all things are possible.” 
It is proposed to hold an International Pharmaceutical Exhibition in Geneva in 
1888. 
Peofessoe Namue, of Echternach, Luxemburg, claims to have discovered an 
effective means for the extermination of the terrible vine pest, the phylloxera. 
It consists of a kind of manure, which continually gives off an atmosphere 
charged with sulphuretted hydrogen, which is poison to the insects. 
In Italy a living scorpion is dropped into a wide-necked glass bottle, which 
contains a few drops of olive oil of the finest quality. More oil is poured on 
instantly until the bottle is filled and the scorpion dead. In its struggle to free 
itself it ejects all its poison into the oil, and this poisoned oil forms a sovereign 
remedy for the sting of a scorpion. — Nat. Druggist. 
He. E. L. Keyes, in the Hew York Medical Journal , recommends milk 
as a vehicle for the administration of iodide of potassium. Where large 
quantities of the drug have to be taken the stomach does not rebel when milk 
is used as the vehicle. Ten, or more, grains of the iodide in a gill of milk 
make a palatable drink, and impart only a mild metallic taste to the fluid, 
which is said to be not disagreeable. 
A cubious result of a raid which the mob at Chicago made on a chemist’s shop 
during the recent riots has become known. Eight Bohemians and Poles have died in 
great agony from drinking large quantities of what they supposed to be intoxicating 
liquors of the ordinary kinds so popular amongst the masses, but which were really 
strong poisons taken from bottles found in the plundered shop. Much of this was 
wine of colchicum, resembling sherry, and having a strong smell of alcohol. Many 
of the rioters drank this in huge gulps, with the result that they died in horrible 
convulsions. Others drank tincture of paregoric in the same way, with fatal results. 
Eight are known to be dead and four are dying. There are no means of ascertaining 
how many others were affected. — Brit, and Col. Druggist. 
The unrestricted traffic in patent medicines is a disgrace to our civilisation ; 
communities and States are up in arms against alcohol as a beverage in all its 
forms except the one most detestable and villanous. Introduce some vile ingre- 
dient into the alcohol, christen and label it as a patent medicine, and lo ! it is 
robed in innocence and welcomed to the homes of the righteous. A poison can 
be legally sold as such in most States only with a flaring label of warning, and 
after double or triple forms of registration by a competent pharmacist. Put it up 
as a patent medicine, decorate it with a seductive title and a rainbow wrapper, 
and at once it is beyond the restraints of regulation, and may be sold by street- 
hawkers, slaughter shops, anybody and everybody, without let or hindrance. 
Where is the consistency, the intelligence, the justice, in this strange partiality 
for the nostrum curse ? — Western Druggist. 
