THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
VOL. XI.—No. IX.—MARCH, 1870. 
THE LATE JUDGMENT OE THE COURT OF 
QUEEN’S BENCH. 
Our readers will, doubtless, peruse with great interest the report in our 
Journal this month, of the decision given in the Court of Queens Bench re¬ 
versing the judgment of the Worthing magistrates in Keg. v. Kerry. 
The"case was ably argued on both sides, although some minor points may 
cause a smile among persons acquainted with medicines and tneii administra¬ 
tion ; notably, the question halt advanced whether external applications were 
to be regarded as medicines at all, and whether the exemptions given in the 
case of poisons, when forming part of the ingredients of compounded medi¬ 
cines, were not given on the assumption that poisons so ordeied were to be 
in combination with other articles intended to neutralize their piopeities. 
We say this may cause a smile with those who know that the true ground 
for the exemption was, that such poisons would be apportioned and guarded 
by instructions for use in a way to render them saie in the hands of the pa¬ 
tient. Having passed over these considerations and admired the manner in 
which Mr. Quain handled the matter throughout, we ami e at uhe lucid veidict 
pronounced by Mir. Justice Lush, and endorsed by Mr. Justice Hannen, and^ 
feel no small satisfaction at the entire correspondence in the interpretation of 
the 17th section of the Pharmacy Act, 1868, by these learned judges, with 
the opinion we have always expressed on it during the discussions which have 
taken place, not only in considering this special case of Berry’s, but also when 
Dr. Brewer deemed it necessary to simplify the exemptions for compounded 
medicines by a section in the Act of 1809. . 
We are well-content, however, to have that simplification legally set forth, 
as it was by the promoters of the former Act in their alteration of Dr. Brewer’s 
proposal; had it been left in his form, the 3rd section of the Amendment 
Act, by specially exempting the compounds made by duly qualified medical 
practitioners, would have cast a still greater doubt on those which chemists 
are daily called on to supply, and would have thrown on them the necessity 
of testing the genuineness of every signature appended to a prescription, no 
matter whether the writer lived in the same town or a hundred miles away 
It will be seen in the opening of the Judge s decision, that in the absence 
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