714 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
and conflicting as to whom the merit of originating the 
inquiry is really due. 
Dr. H assail lays claim to the introduction of the use of the 
microscope as a means of detecting these adulterations ; and it 
may be said that he “ and Dr. Normandy led the van, and 
c did a tale unfold 5 which threatened to create a panic both 
in the provision and the drug markets. Mr. Warrington, of 
Apothecaries’ Hall, corroborated some of the statements 
made, and Dr. R. D. Thomson followed with a long catalogue 
of frauds, while others, on special subjects, brought up the 
rear ; thus completing what might be termed the case for the 
prosecution . 55 
The inquiry has doubtlessly exposed many startling — not 
to say nefarious — practices, some of which had become 
almost conventional ; yet on the other hand, it is to be feared 
that in their endeavours to denounce these abuses the 
witnesses have allowed themselves to indulge a little in highly 
coloured statements and some exaggerations. This has 
necessarily created a recoil in the public mind. It is 
remarked, by the editor of the Pharmaceutical Journal — 
“ Other testimony was required to place the question in its 
true light. Messrs. Redwood, Herring, and Scanlan, and 
Dr. Letheby, while corroborating the previous evidence to a 
certain extent, repudiated, on the part of the respectable por- 
tion of the several trades implicated in the inquiry, the general 
denunciation which had been passed upon them. Mr. Phillips 
(of the chemical department, Inland Revenue) also gives some 
practical information founded on personal experience in his 
office ; and his evidence, as well as that of some other wit- 
nesses, is calculated to moderate the intensity of the cloud 
w hich seemed to overshadow the inquiry at its early stages . 55 
But we have said ours is a specific object, namely, to see 
how far the evidences brought forward affect the practitioner 
of veterinary medicine in exposing the sophistications carried 
on in the drugs used by him. 
The time is happily gone by when “anything was thought 
good enough for a horse ; 55 and the educated veterinary 
surgeon knows full well that dependence on the action of 
