THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL 
SECOND SERIES. 
VOL. VII.—No. X.—APRIL, IS66. 
THE PENALTY FOE, A MISTAKE. 
The recent trial at Lewes, of which a report will be found at page 527, cannot 
fail to excite many serious reflections in the minds of those who are engaged in 
the practice of pharmacy. Is there any one of them who can ensure to himself 
exemption from accident ? Happily such accidents as that which formed the 
subject of this investigation are of rare occurrence, but they sometimes happen, 
as in this instance, to qualified, experienced, and careful dispensers, who have 
the knowledge and skill acquired by many years of study and practice in their 
profession, and who employ the most approved means of guarding against such 
mistakes. No precautions that can be adopted will entirely preclude the occur¬ 
rence of accidents, and if those who commit them are to be held responsible in 
proportion to the amount of damage resulting, and not to any defect of quali¬ 
fication or precaution to which the accident can be ascribed, the position of the 
pharmaceutist becomes a serious one indeed. 
It must have been highly gratifying to Air. Noakes, and it will be so to all 
his brethren, to find that one of the most eminent of our judges, the Chief 
Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, practically condemned the prosecution 
of this case, as one that ought not to have been undertaken. When a Judge 
in his charge to the Grand Jury says, “ I commend the case to your careful 
notice, because, as I read the depositions, I think that the charge is not made 
out against the accused,” we do not expect to hear anything more of it, and 
such appears to have been the expectation formed by the public in this case, for 
we find it stated in the newspaper report, that “ at about half-past four in the 
afternoon, and to the great astonishment of every one in Court , the Grand Jury, 
notwithstanding the way in which they had been charged by the learned Judge, 
brought in a true bill against Richard Noakes for feloniously and wilfully 
causing to be taken by Samuel Boys, a certain deadly poison called aconite, and 
thereby slaying the said Samuel Boys, on the 21st of August, 1865.” This act 
of the Grand Jury caused even more surprise than the fact of Air. Noakes 
having been committed by the magistrates to take his trial, or of the charge 
having been preferred against him at all. From the first, it was known that 
the friends of the deceased were not the prosecutors, and even the Judge sig¬ 
nificantly pointed to the fact, that it was not at all by the desire of the 
widow that the proceedings were taken. Where, then, has the prosecution 
originated ? There has been no expression of public feeling in favour of such a 
course, nor have the medical profession in any way favoured it. In fact, there 
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