412 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. [November 18, 1871. 
objectionable tliis may be, our home manufacturers 
have cause for congratulation that their interests 
are protected, although the general body of pharma¬ 
ceutists will have to suffer for the change in the 
law by having to pay a higher price for their goods, 
-and will also in many instances have imposed on 
them methylated chloral for the genuine article, as 
the difference in price will be a strong inducement 
to unprincipled manufacturers to substitute the 
cheap for the dearer kind. 
In studying this question, there appears to be but 
•one way of getting rid of the duties on such neces¬ 
sary preparations as chloral, chloroform and other 
substances that cannot be prepared without alcohol, 
which is, that these goods, when manufactured in 
this country, should be made in bond from duty-free 
•spirit. Many difficulties surround the subject, and 
we are not prepared to speak confidently of the 
practicability of this suggestion, knowing the subject 
is such a wide one. If it were granted by the 
Treasury, the Customs authorities would, in order to 
protect the spirit revenue, certainly have to impose 
stringent regulations on those manufacturers who 
availed themselves of the privilege. Still, the con¬ 
cession would be the means of increasing honest 
competition, which always proves to be of great 
benefit to the public, and it would also give our 
manufacturers opportunities of making original ex¬ 
periments with duty-free spirit, which they cannot 
now afford to do with that which is duty paid. 
THE APPLICATION OF THE PHARMACY ACT. 
A shout time since we called attention to the fact 
that under the Pharmacy Act, 1868, any one has the 
power of proceeding against persons who deal ille¬ 
gally in poisons, and we suggested that if those who 
are injured by such illegal dealing would study 
the provisions of the Act, they would see how 
easily they could protect themselves by its aid. 
Hut our remarks have received a rough com¬ 
mentary in a case reported in another part of this 
.Journal; and if the decision of the magistrates, 
—who appeared on this occasion to understand the 
provisions of the Act,—is to be taken as a specimen 
of what will be done in similar cases, the Pharmacy 
Act, so far as the sale of poisons is concerned, will 
become a dead letter. In this case a sale of oxalic 
acid insufficiently labelled was proved, and admitted 
by the defendant, and very properly a fine was in¬ 
flicted for the offence; but we are utterly at a loss to 
■conceive why the complainant should have had to 
pay the costs; the penalty thus practically falling 
upon him. If it come to be understood that in addi¬ 
tion to the trouble, those who endeavour to perform 
u public duty are to be put to considerable expense, 
we fear that the sale of poison will go on without 
■any attempt to enforce the present legal restrictions. 
It is curious, in the presence of such difficulty in 
carrying out what is now the law of die land, to 
meet with so much vague declamatiai as to the 
duties of pharmaceutists in regard to tie sale of poi¬ 
sons. An addition to the many publisied instances 
of it from persons who might have beai expected to 
be better informed, will be found the following quo¬ 
tation from a paper by Dr. John Spincer Ferris, 
of Uxbridge, in the British Medical Journal, con¬ 
cerning some anomalous symptoms in a case of 
morphia poisoning, where he says :— 
“ The twenty-five drops of morphia were dropped out 
of a four-ounce bottle, labelled ‘Solution of Muriate of 
Morphia, ten to sixty drops per dose,’ obtained from a 
chemist in Reading, so that I cannot exactly tell the 
strength, more especially as these were almost the last 
drops in the bottle, and very probably there w r as some 
undissolved alkaloid in them. How is it a chemist, now 
that the Pharmacy Act has come into operation, dares to 
sell to an unprofessional person four ounces of morphia 
solution?” 
The writer’s difficulty as to the strength of the 
solution betrays an ignorance of the Pharmacopoeia 
that is balanced by his ignorance of a pharmaceu¬ 
tist’s duty under the Pharmacy Act. 
Another illustration of the incorrect ideas upon 
this subject, current even among those connected 
with pharmacy, has recently come under our notice. 
Upon a gentleman who is in business, but not on 
the Register of Chemists and Druggists, being in¬ 
formed that he must take steps to place himself upon 
the Register if he purposed to continue in business, 
he replied, that he had been registered many years 
since, when he had taken up his freedom of the City 
of London, and that proof of liis statement might 
be seen at the Chamberlain’s office. 
MUNICIPAL HONOURS TO PHARMACEUTISTS. 
We record in another column a very interesting 
ceremonial, the object of which was to do honour 
to a pharmaceutist, and one of the Local Secretaries 
of the Pharmaceutical Society, in the person of Mr. 
Peter Spokes, —or, as he now is virtually, and by 
the exercise of her Majesty’s prerogative soon will 
be actually, Sir Peter Spokes, —of Reading. In ad¬ 
dition to this gratifying testimony to the municipal 
worth of a member of the pharmaceutical body, we 
are enabled to state that the following gentlemen 
were recently elected to the mayoralty of their re¬ 
spective towns:—Mr. E. Bagott, Chemist and Drug¬ 
gist, Dudley; Mr. T. Deighton, Pharmaceutical Che¬ 
mist and Local Secretary, Bridgnorth; Mr. John 
Irving, Chemist and Druggist, Carlisle ; Mr. Robert 
Payne, Chemist and Druggist, Wallingford; Mr. 
John Slater, Chemist and Druggist, Beaumaris; Mr. 
Robert Walker, Pharmaceutical Chemist and Local 
Secretary, Maidenhead. 
In the opening columns of our Journal this w r eek 
will be found an article on the question, “ Shall the 
Pharmaceutical Society Cease to be an Educating 
Body? ” which we recommend to the careful attention 
of our readers, as illustrating the views held in some 
quarters upon the subject. At the same time we 
would suggest that members who have thought upon 
the question and hold decided opinions concerning 
it, should communicate them, in order that the topic 
should be discussed with the fulness that is due to 
its importance. 
