444 
justices’ justice. 
There are other regulations, relating more particularly to the keeping and 
dispensing of poisons, which it is proposed to make obligatory upon those 
who are authorized to deal with poisons, hut these require to be submitted 
to. and approved by, a general meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society, before 
they acquire the sanction of law, and that will not take place until the Annual 
Meeting in May next. The regulations, however, were published in the last 
number of this Journal, page 383, and although not yet compulsory, it is very 
desirable that they should be generally adopted and brought into use at as 
early a period as possible. . 
If members throughout the country, and placed under different circum¬ 
stances, would at once adopt such of the regulations as they think best suited 
to their particular cases, they would be able, when the subject comes to be 
discussed in May, to give the results of their experiences. It will be observed, 
on referring to the resolution of the Council, at page 383 in our last issue, 
that with reference to the keeping of poisons, several systems are named, 
and it is proposed to be left to the discretion of each individual chemist to 
determine which of these he will adopt. Some discretion is also proposed to 
be left to the dispenser, as to the method of distinguishing the bottles con¬ 
taining poisons and medicines intended for external application, fiom others. 
JUSTICES’ JUSTICE. 
Oar readers will recollect a case which occurred some months ago at Worth- 
in g in which a chemist was convicted before the magistrates for an assumed 
infringement of the Pharmacy Act, in having dispensed a medicine containing 
prussic acid without attaching a poison-label to it. If that decision was right, 
we presume that chemists throughout the country are daily breaking the law in 
a similar way, and incurring the penalty imposed in that case. It certainly was 
never intended by those who framed the Act, nor we believe by the legislature 
in passim*- it, that such a construction should be put upon the words of the 17th 
section. °The conviction of the magistrates has been appealed against, and the 
case is expected to come on shortly iu the Court of Queen s Bench. So per¬ 
fectly satisfied, however, are the legal advisers of the Society that the decision 
was wrong, that the Council, in the paper now issued for the guidance of che¬ 
mists, indicate exactly the same regulation to be adopted in dispensing poisons 
as was adopted by the Worthing chemist, . 
In the early part of last month a case occurred at Bolton, in which a man 
had poisoned himself with laudanum, purchased of a chemist. The laudanum 
was properly labelled as the Act requires, and the purchaser was cautioned with 
regard to its use, being told that the dose was 10 or 12 drops. The quantity 
sold was 6 drachms, the whole of which the purchaser swallowed as soon as he 
o-ot home. The coroner, in commenting on this case, referred to the 17th .sec¬ 
tion of the Pharmacy Act, which he said made it unlawful to sell preparations 
of opium without duly entering them in a book, and he further said that this 
was one of the class of poisons intended not to be sold unless the purchaser or a 
witness be known to the vendor, and entries made in a book. He recommended 
the case to the notice of the public prosecutor. Now opium and its preparations 
are contained in part 2 of schedule A, and it is perfectly clear that in selling 
such poisons it is only necessary that they should be labelled with the name ot 
the article, the word poison, and the name and address of the seller. VV e 
strongly recommend the use of labels for poisons containing on the same label 
all the information required by law to be attached to the article} thus 
