THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
VOL. XL—No. VII.—JANUARY, 1870. 
ADDITIONS TO THE SCHEDULE OF POISONS OF THE 
PHARMACY ACT 1868, AND PROPOSED REGULATIONS TO 
BE OBSERVED IN KEEPING AND DISPENSING POISONS. 
When the Pharmacy Bill was under discussion in the House of Commons, 
there were advocates for greater stringency who said, “ It will be useless to 
leave the power of declaring new poisons to the Council of the Pharmaceutical 
Society ; to save themselves trouble they will keep the schedule as small as 
possible.” This assertion was met by the very opposite one, “ that in order to 
ensure a monopoly for the chemists, the Council would be continually addins to 
the list.” J ° 
Those gentlemen who held the former opinion, perhaps reasoned from the 
persistence with which the promoters of the Bill resisted the introduction of the 
word u preparations ” after each simple substance enumerated, and resisted it 
successfully, too, iH all but five cases. From want of practical knowledge on 
such matters, members of Parliament could not appreciate the inconvenience 
which would have been caused, not only to the vendors, but also to the public, 
by such a restriction. Take for example “tartar emetic:” had “its prepara¬ 
tions ’’ been included, a popular emetic, which, if wanted at all, is generally re¬ 
quired suddenly and quickly, would frequently have been delayed many hours 
in reaching the sufferer. For such reasons as this we think the course adopted 
by the Council was a wise one. And now comes the proof that those who had 
charge of the Bill on the part of the chemists are not (and we presume were not) 
merely sacrificing the safety of the public to the convenience of the trade. Our 
readers will remember—or if they do not, it will be well to refresh their me¬ 
mories by turning back to the 1 Pharmaceutical Journal ’ for April, 1869, and 
reperusing—a case submitted to the Privy Council on the question of “ prepa¬ 
rations,” particularly of opium. That case opens with the assertion that there 
is no difficulty with such really dangerous poisons as strychnine, power being 
given to the Council by section 2 of the Act to declare them poison. 
That power has now been exercised, not in a spirit of monopoly, but, as we 
believe, as a simple matter of duty; aud we desire, although the resolution re¬ 
ported in the minutes of Council, and the extract from the ‘London Gazette,’ 
both appear in our present number, to note here the addition, which our readers 
will do well at once to make in writing to their copies of the Pharmacy Act, or 
introductory chapter of their poison books. 
First, then, to Part I. let them add— 
Preparations of prussic acid. 
,, ,, cyanide of potassium and all metallic cyanides. 
,, „ strychnine. 
,, ,, atropine. 
VOL. XI. 2 c 
