May 24, 1873.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
935 
police might undertake, and that if they would not under¬ 
take it as a matter of police, they might do so under his 
directions, purchasing any articles he should direct, and 
keeping them according to his instructions. But from 
the police he got no assistance at all, rather the reverse : 
then, on sending from London a special agent to go 
round to the persons who had been named to him, and 
make purchases, what was the result ? the messenger 
was scoffed at in nearly every instance, and had 
not the chance of obtaining the evidence that was 
required. In one or two instances he was even told that 
it was known a messenger was coming down from the 
Pharmaceutical Society to make purchases. If gentle¬ 
men would only be a little bold, and take up a position 
as representatives of the Society, make purchases on the 
spot, and instead of sending them to London in such a 
way as to break the links, which it was most important 
to preserve, keep them, and write to him for instructions, 
there would be no difficulty in getting a great many con¬ 
victions in various parts of the country if that were thought 
desirable. It is very easy to get convictions for selling 
poisons if gentlemen would only take the matter into their 
own hands ; they must get an article purchased, and in 
nearly every instance it would pass at once into the hands 
of a skilled gentleman who could prove that it contained 
poison, and then a summons before a magistrate, and 
proof of the purchase, and of the existence of the poison 
in the article purchased, would ensure a speedy conviction. 
It did not always follow that an article purchased as a 
poison really contained the poison, and therefore both 
proof of the purchase and of the presence of the poison 
was necessary. If proof of those two things were secured, 
he did not believe that there was any reluctance on the 
part of the Council to prosecute, although at the same 
time it was felt that the real mission of the Council was 
to point out how the thing could be done, and that chemists 
and druggists throughout the country ought to take a 
little trouble and put the law in force in their own 
localities. Anything with regard to the register must of 
course be done through the Society, and wherever there 
was evidence to warrant proceedings, they were always 
taken so far as he knew. 
Mr. Frazer (Glasgow) said the course taken in Scotland 
was this : there was there as there was in England a class 
of gentlemen called writers or lawyers, and another class 
called messengers-at-arms. Now, in Glasgow, there was 
the same delicacy felt by the local secretary as to prose¬ 
cuting his immediate neighbour, so they employed an 
agent, who, under the instructions of Mr. Flux employed 
two messengers-at-arms to get the necessary evidence. 
They came to him, and he gave them some old prescrip¬ 
tions containing poisons; then they took them into the dif¬ 
ferent shops and got them dispensed. Having thus got the 
necessary evidence, the case was brought into court, and 
there was no difficulty whatever. He did not see why 
the same thing should not be done in every town in Eng¬ 
land. 
Mr. Giles (Clifton) said he should be very sorry to go 
so far as the gentleman in Glasgow did in employing 
messengers-at-arms to entrap a man in that way. Acting 
on the maxim qui facit per aliam facit per se, he should not 
like to do a dirty underhand thing for anybody, and what 
had been described was very similar to the action some¬ 
times taken by the Excise, who having been participators 
in some possibly provable offence, convicted the party 
upon it. He should be very sorry to do that himself, and 
he did not think any member of an honourable trade 
should be guilty of such a thing, but what he thought 
they might very well do would be this : In discharge 
of their duty to themselves, and carrying out the Act 
of Parliament, he should not hesitate in going straight 
to any man whom he intended to trip up and telling him 
he understood he was doing so-and-so; that it was against 
the law and contravened his own privileges, and caution¬ 
ing him that, if he continued it, he should take means 
to ascertain whether he did so, and to prosecute him for 
it. That would be perfectly manly and upright, but he 
did not like the idea of taking a prescription which lie 
did not want, and getting it made up by a man who sup¬ 
posed it was really wanted, for the sake of prosecuting 
him afterwards. 
Mr. Frazer (Glasgow) said the men he had referred 
to were warned by the Secretary that they were breaking 
the law, and it was only after repeated warnings that 
steps were taken to prosecute them in the way he had 
mentioned. 
Mr. Schacht (Clifton) said he had listened with the 
greatest pleasure in the world to the full expressions and 
discontent which had fallen from several gentlemen in 
reference to the small amount of work done by the Council 
in the matter on which he felt very strongly, namely, 
provincial education. His only object in rising now was 
to assure the meeting the Council had not been idle 
in their efforts to do something even if the results had 
been small. They had been very anxious to find if pos¬ 
sible some scheme which should affect all cases arising 
within that scope of the subject, and a step had been taken 
by the putting "forward of one scheme for general discus¬ 
sion. Unfortunately it did not elicit so much general 
approbation as he hoped, and they were obliged after a time 
to abandon it, but still some advance had been made in the 
general appreciation of the necessities of the case, and he 
hoped it might lead to some more practical work in the 
future. In the meantime he would ask all gentlemen inter¬ 
ested in the question to express their opinions as practically 
and distinctly as possible, for this would immensely assist 
the Council in their work. There was one stumbling-block 
in the way of all schemes of this kind, that unless there 
were a general co-operation in one scheme it was of very 
little use. He himself naturally thought his own scheme 
a splendid one, but it did not meet with general approval, 
and that being so, it could not be carried into effect. At 
present it had received a great deal more criticism than 
approval. However little they might appear to be doing, 
they were very anxious to do more ; and for himself he 
might say that nothing in the Report dissatisfied him so 
much as finding that they had funded £2,300. It seemed 
to him a most unfortunate fact that they had no process by 
which that very large sum could be made useful to the 
community who supplied it. 
Mr. W. S. Brown (Vice-President), in reference to the ap¬ 
plication from Aberdeen referred to by Mr. Reid, said when 
that application was first received in 1871, it was referred 
to the Committee, as usual. It asked for £25 for providing 
suitable apparatus for teaching chemistry, materia xnedica, 
and botany, and so on ; and for an annual grant of £*20 to 
assist in paying lecturers and providing materials, etc. That 
seemed rather a startling application; and the Committee, 
after consideration, advised the grant of a sum of £10 to 
aid in affording education to the young men at Aberdeen 
and the district. This sum was quite as much as could be 
expected in proportion to the amounts granted to other 
places, and was certainly not out of proportion to the 
sum received by the Society from Aberdeen. The largest 
number of members there at any time was twenty, and 
that had now diminished to about twelve. Under those 
circumstances, he thought the grant of £10 was quite as 
much as could have been reasonably expected. That 
grant was refused, and some eighteen months afterwards 
another application was made ; this being referred to the 
Committee, they repeated their former offer, the cheque 
originally drawn being still in existence. Tt was again 
refused, and he did not think under these circumstances 
the good people at Aberdeen had any reason to com¬ 
plain. 
Mr. Reid said the facts, as stated by Mr. Brown, were 
quite correct, except that, as he had stated before, it Was 
not an unconditional grant of £10, but, in point of fact, 
a loan of £10 to provide chemical apparatus, which was 
to continue the property of the Society, and to be redeem¬ 
able at the end of three years. Looking at it in that 
point of view, they thought if they could get or. without 
