THE AU STRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
440 
head-quarters of the Board whose term of office has just expired was at Auck- 
land, and the next Board will have its head-quarters at Christchurch. Among 
the present members, which form the number required by the Board, Messrs. 
J. Bonnington, of Christchurch, and Pond, of Auckland, are the only members 
of the expiring Board. Messrs. Ross, of Christchurch, and Wilkinson, of 
Dunedin, were members of the first Board. 
A proposal to get up a public testimonial to Miss Houston, who was 
acquitted of being concerned in the Timaru poisoning case, is meeting with 
considerable favour in Christchurch. 
J&oizs tx&tn 
In an article on the Victorian Court at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition 
the Pharmaceutical Journal (18th September) writes : — The opium poppy 
appears to grow very luxuriantly in Victoria, specimens brought to the Exhibition 
by Mr. Bosisto being over six feet high. At present sufficient opium is not made 
in the colony for home consumption, although protected by a tax of 20s. per 
lb. levied on foreign opium. In colour, odour, and “touch” the Australian opium 
is superior to most of the Turkey opium of commerce, and contains on an average 
10 per cent, of morphia in the fresh, or 11 ‘5 per cent, in the dried opium. The 
excellent quality of this commodity leads to the hope that the time may yet 
come when this colony will supply the opium at present imported from foreign 
countries. The chief difficulty is the expense of labour. 
Patent Medicines. — In reply to the query, “ What means can be employed 
to discourage physicians from prescribing the copyrighted proprietary nostrums 
so extensively advertised in the medical journals p” the National Druggist writes : 
— “The remedy to discourage physicians in prescribing such stuff, which is avail- 
able, is for the pharmacist to be untiring in his efforts to lay before the medical 
profession also cases where, to his knowledge, fraud is practised ; to use, also, 
his best endeavours to spread the knowledge of pharmacy among medical men, 
who can only profit thereby. The more the medical practitioner acquaints himself 
with pharmacy, the fewer nostrums is he liable to prescribe — he will learn the 
necessity of formulating the remedies himself, and not allow ignorance or preten- 
sion to do it for him.” 
From tiie American Druggist we learn that the Medical Society of the 
district of Leipzig and the Association of Pharmacists of Leipzig and surround- 
ing districts recently held a convention for the purpose of taking some action 
against the spread or encouragement of secret remedies, at which the following 
regulations were adopted : — (1) It is the business of physicians to cure the sick ; 
that of the pharmacists to prepare the medicines. (2 a) The physicians pledge 
themselves not to recommend any secret remedies to their patients. (2 b) The 
pharmacists agree not to issue any announcements or bombastic advertisements 
of secret remedies, nor to attach their own or their firm’s name to such as 
mention the diseases or complaints the remedy is supposed to cure. (3) The 
patronage given by physicians to wholesale houses is to be antagonised in every 
possible way, as being opposed to the public interest. 
Writing of the Holloway College, a London paper says: — “Strange as it 
may seem, pills are the favourite form of ornamentation within and without 
the college. The first and last thing that one discovers in the distant view of 
the building is the gilded pill carried by the lightning-conductor at the apex. 
As one gets closer one finds pills stuck about everywhere. At the principal 
gateway a gigantic pill seems struggling out of its box at the top of each gate- 
