February 25, 1871.] THE P HARM ACE UTIC AL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
GO 7 
toasjrontaa. 
*** No notice can be taken of anonymous communica¬ 
tions. Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenti¬ 
cated by the name and address of the writer ; not necessarily 
for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. 
Poison Regulations. 
Sir,—You may imagine that I have watched very closely 
the correspondence appearing from week to week on the 
poison regulations, but until the publication in your last 
issue of a letter from Mr. Reynolds I had determined to take 
no part therein. That letter however reflects so seriously 
on the Council (of which he is a member) in their late pro¬ 
ceedings, and personally on me as President, that I cannot 
longer remain silent. 
That Mr. Reynolds should deem me unfit to hold the office 
•of President will astonish no one who reads his imputation 
on the manner in which the duties of the Council have been 
performed, and his insinuation that a certain deficiency in 
myself has been the cause of mischief. 
My present occupation of the chair was certainly not of my 
own seeking, and I should have vacated it ere this, had not 
the agitation on these very regulations assumed such a nature 
that my withdrawal would have seemed a desertion of duty, 
and a bequest of trouble to a successor who might have been 
less acquainted with the difficulties of the question. Had 
popularity been my sole object, I should wisely have declined 
to resume the Presidency in June last; my success had then 
quite “satisfied” my “highest ambition,” and the body of 
the trade had most handsomely, as Mr. Reynolds’s letter re¬ 
minds me, “expressed their gratitude.” 
But when Mr. Reynolds suggests that my personal entan¬ 
glement with Mr. Simon has brought the Council into a false 
position, I feel bound to assure him, and all who may share 
his opinion, that he is utterly mistaken. If ever there was 
entanglement between us, it was of an entirely different na¬ 
ture to the one now implied. Of all opponents to the restric¬ 
tive clauses which the Privy Council sought to import into 
the Pharmacy Bill, I was (as Mr. Simon has said and would 
doubtless say again, although we may have forgiven past dif¬ 
ferences) the most “ obstinate.” 
There is one point of the Act existing as proof of this, 
which Mr. Reynolds entirely misinterprets—the division of 
the schedule of poisons into two parts. After our Bill had 
passed the Lords, it was proposed in the Commons to apply 
all the formalities of the “ Arsenic Act” to every poison in 
the schedule. In a long conference at the Privy Council 
office between Lord Robert Montagu, Mr. Headlam, Mr. 
Simon, and myself, I successfully opposed that proposition. 
Immediately after, notices of equally objectionable amend¬ 
ments were put on the paper of the House by Mr. Lowe; 
one of them even went so far as to prohibit the sale of more 
than one'“medicinal dose” of any poison without the order 
in writing of a legally qualified medical practitioner. 
These amendments were discussed in the House, and, result¬ 
ing therefrom, a conference took place between Lord Elcho, 
Mr. Lowe, Mr. Simon, Mr. Hills and myself, which ended in 
the compromise set down in the 17th section; the division of 
the schedule into tivo parts, in order to liberate the articles 
in more common use from the restrictions applied to those in 
Tart I.; and the provision that vendors should comply with 
such regulations as might from time to time be made by the 
Pharmaceutical Society, etc. 
Thus arose the “ tacit understanding ” which Mr. Reynolds 
now seeks to stigmatise as a “ secret treaty ,” and which may 
perhaps grow in his imagination, as it is “ pondered over,” 
into a “ conspiracy;” it is so easy to advance step by step 
when one is predisposed to go in a certain direction. 
The “tacit understanding” is that duty implied in the 
words of the first section, nothing more. The remedy, on the 
Society failing in its duty, rests with the House of Commons, 
which was, and may still be, in the mind to pass a more 
stringent measure. 
And here let me draw attention to Mr. Reynolds’s compa¬ 
rison of the style of the 1st and that of the 9th section. I hold 
the two occasions to be entirely dissimilar: the latter refer to 
a register which was wanted for immediate use,—indeed the 
Act could not be started without it,—and the order was that 
the Council “ shall with all convenient speed ” proceed to 
establish it. 
As to the first section, the expression is not tb°* tne Coun¬ 
cil “may make regulations,” but tha< persons registered 
under the Act shall comrlr *rlth such regulations as may 
from time to time be made. This surely implies not simply a 
power to make, but an expectation that regulations will be made. 
Speaking of this “expectation” reminds me of one of the most 
remarkable passages in Mr. Reynolds’s remarkable letter. He 
there charges some “ gentlemen officially connected with the 
Pharmaceutical Society” with suborning evidence to suit the 
purposes of the Council. I can form no idea of the persons to 
whom he alludes, and although he talks of having “ the best 
authority” for this assertion, I feel pretty confident he has 
been “ gammoned.” The editors of the Pall Mall and Lancet 
will probably give us some enlightenment on the point. 
I read another article, couched in rather strong terms, in 
the British Medical Journal of last week; perhaps Mr. 
Reynolds will attribute that to the same source ? 
Mr. Reynolds chooses to call the Pharmacy Bill of 1865 an 
“ expensive failure.” It certainly was not expensive; and, 
although it failed to pass, it paved the way for the Act of 
1868, and I cannot in any way admit that we have shown 
want of good faith in mentioning the obstruction which cer¬ 
tain Chemists and Druggists caused to that Bill, or in our 
bearing towards them since. 
The assertion in the “statement of reasons” that the Bill 
“No. 2” was the first Pharmacy Bill containing Poison 
clauses is perfectly true. The Society had always previously 
held, that although the education of the vendors should be an 
imperative condition of any Poison Bill, yet the provisions 
for their education, and the regulations for the trade in poisons 
should be contained in two distinct Acts of Parliament. 
Mr. Reynolds takes exception to the conduct of the Council 
in delegating to a committee the “ revision and issue of the 
statement of reasons.” I can only tell him the paper so com¬ 
mitted was carefully read over and approved by the Council, 
and the Committee had no power to alter it, beyond making 
the verbal changes rendered necessary by the discussion of 
the morning. 
And now, Sir, although my letter may already appear too 
long, I must add a word or two on the “representative” cha¬ 
racter of our Council. Admitting fully that we are but de¬ 
legates, I hold that we are delegated to sit in Council, and 
there to exercise our judgment; frequently , and in such cases 
as this especially, to promote action on the part of the So¬ 
ciety when that action tends to the common good; and that 
in the matter of these regulations the Society icill act for 
itself, not by its delegates. It will be a bad day for the Phar¬ 
maceutical Society when its Council is deprived of the right of 
private judgment, and when the members of the Society cease 
to respect themselves in the persons of their representatives ! 
Piccadilly, Feb. 21 st, 1871. George W. Sandeord. 
The Journal, the Council and the Poison 
Regulations. 
Sir,—In retiring from the Council a few months ago I 
hoped to have been able to leave entirely, or at least for a 
considerable time, the troubled arena of pharmaceutical politics ; 
and were it not for a matter in which the honour and indepen¬ 
dence of the “Journal” is concerned, I should even now have 
allowed my views on recent events to have remained unex¬ 
pressed. 
Does the Council need to be reminded that the “Journal” 
is the property of the Society, and that, so far as they have 
control over it, such power is only held in trust for the So¬ 
ciety ? If they recognize this fact, I would ask how they can 
justify the employment of its official portions for purposes 
of partisan warfare ? I put it thus pointedly, for no one who 
has closely followed the tone of the leading articles relating to 
the “Poison Regulations” can fail to see where the Editor 
ceases to speak for himself, and becomes, under pressure, the 
mere mouthpiece of a party who chance to be in power. 
It happens that a majority of the present Council favour 
the imposition upon the whole trade of certain “ poison regu¬ 
lations,” and an attitude of obsequious obedicnco to the me¬ 
dical officer of the Privy Council; whilst an influential mino¬ 
rity, backed by the sense of the members at large, as ascer¬ 
tained at the last Anniversary Meeting, desire independence 
of action within the limits of distinct (not imaginary) obliga¬ 
tions. Now, if the majority of the Council, without any know¬ 
ledge of the feeling of their constituents, endeavoured only to 
crush the opinion of the minority by insisting that their 
particular views should be advocated in a manner not open 
