CONVICTION FOR DISPENSING WITHOUT POISON LABEL. 
99 
of a “ legally qualified medical practitioner.” Physicians by common custom 
only sign their initials, and many prescribers do not sign at all. 
These reasons were sufficient for the Peers, who usually consider such 
matters calmly, and in a business-like manner, and the Bill was accordingly 
returned to the Commons with the third section erased. To this erasure the 
Commons objected, 
“ Because it is just that qualified medical practitioners should he exempted 
from the provisions of the 17 th Section of the recited Act , under the conditions 
of the said clause 
and the Lords then agreed to restore it, with alterations, cutting out all men¬ 
tion of prescriptions, and bringing it to its present form. In this form it 
effectually removes the possibility of any mistake as to the requirements of 
the law. Dr. Brewer’s fear was, that a mixture prescribed by a legally qua¬ 
lified medical practitioner might be marked “ Poison,” etc., and thereby 
alarm the patient. But he forgot—presuming this extraordinary reading of 
Section 17 to be correct—that the dispenser must have certain knowledge of 
the genuineness of the prescription and of the qualification of the prescriber, 
to justify him in departing from this mode of labelling, and that he would 
be daily exposed to penalties in the ordinary exercise of his business. Our 
present Journal contains an example of this danger in an account of a case at 
Worthing, in which a prescription, duly signed with initials as by a physi¬ 
cian, giving the name of the patient, and to all appearance genuine, turned out 
to be a forgery, and the chemist who dispensed it was put in peril thereby. 
Surely the honourable member for Colchester must see how greatly improved 
his amendment has been by the House of Lords ! 
CONVICTION OP A DBUGGIST POP DISPENSING POISON 
WITHOUT A POISON LABEL. 
At page 162 of the present number will be found a report of proceedings 
before the Worthing magistrates, in which a charge was preferred against a 
druggist, first, for unlawfully selling poison to a stranger, and secondly, for 
selling poison in a bottle not having a poison label attached to it. The case 
is briefly referred to in the concluding paragraph of the preceding article, 
but when that article was written the magistrate’s decision had not been 
given ; indeed, the result, which has greatly astonished us, only came to hand 
as we were going to press. 
In addition to"the particulars given in the report above alluded to, we may 
add the following. On Wednesday, the 11th of August, a young man of 
respectable appearance, went in a fly to the shop of a druggist in Worthing, 
where he was not known, and presented a prescription of which the following 
is a copy, to be dispensed:—■ 
p, Acid. Hydrocyan. “ Scheeles ” 5ij 
Aq. Bosse §ij 
M. ft. Lotio, ter die applicand. 
E. M. L. 
Mrs. Neicton. 
The medine was prepared according to the prescription, in an angular bottle, 
to which a coloured label with the words “ Caution—For external use,” 
and the name and address of the druggist, was attached ; and the prescription 
was copied in a book kept for that purpose. Mr. Berry, the druggist, had thus 
fulfilled all that the Act of Parliament requires in dispensing medicines, ac- 
H 2 
