778 
THE PHAEMACEUTICAL JOUENAL AND TEANSACTIONS. 
[March 23, 1872. 
that they have no time to write carefully; for certainly, 
next to doctors’ prescriptions, lawyers’ opinions are the 
most illegible things written. He (the learned Judge) 
did not say that to raise a laugh, hut for another reason. 
If the deceased had written the prescription in question 
for a patient, and the same mistake had been made, he 
might himself have stood in the dock to answer a charge 
of manslaughter for having written it in such a way as 
to cause a poison to he made up. But it did not follow, 
because the deceased was to blame, the prisoner was not. 
As he had said, the mistake the prisoner made was in 
reading “sal” for “sol.” Ho (the Judge) should have 
thought it was obviously “sol.” But it must be borne 
in mind that the modern mode of writing “sol.” was to 
write “liquor.” He could not, therefore, help thinking 
that the word “sol.,” written instead of “liquor,” mis¬ 
led the prisoner ; for not only might he have read it as 
“sal” in itself, but inasmuch as “sol.” was not the 
proper word to use, he was tempted into reading it as 
“sal.” Now, if a dose made up of a scruple of the salt 
muriate of morphia had been a dose that a man could 
possibly take, the prisoner’s mistake would have been ex¬ 
cusable. In other words, if half a drachm of the solu¬ 
tion would have been good for one complaint and 
half a drachm of the salt would be good for another 
complaint,’the man would have made an excusable mis¬ 
take, into which he had been tempted by the person 
who wrote the prescription. But when it was borne in 
mind that half a drachm of the solution was a proper 
dose for a certain complaint, but that half a drachm of 
salt was three times over a fatal dose, and therefore a 
dose which no one could have prescribed, then the pri¬ 
soner was put in a dilemna. Either he knew what he 
put up was a fatal dose, or he did not know it. If he 
did not know it, he failed to bring that common know¬ 
ledge to the discharge of his duty as a chemist which he 
ought to have brought; and before he undertook to 
meddle with these deadly poisons, he ought to have ac¬ 
quired the rudimentary knowledge that would have 
taught him that half a drachm of the salt would cer¬ 
tainly poison a man. But if he did know the deadly 
character of the drug,—and it was manifest that he did, 
because he found out the mistake himself, and, with one 
exception, did his best to remedy it,—he was placed on 
the other horn of the dilemna, viz. that he had no justi¬ 
fication for misreading the prescription, if he was aware 
that half a drachm of the salt would necessarily be a fatal 
dose. The way in which the prosecution put the case 
was this, either you knew it, or you did not. If you did 
not, your meddling with deadly drugs was a culpable 
and criminal act on your part; if you did know, then 
your putting up a preparation for a man which would 
poison him three times over, if he took the quantity 
stated on the bottle, was a criminal piece of negligence, 
and a criminal misreading of the prescription. That 
would possibly answer the case put by Mr. Cole. No 
doubt if Sir William Jenner had, in plain, legible writing 
described the salt, it would have been rather a bold 
thing for a chemist to have refused to make it up; but 
if he (the Judge) were a chemist, and thought in his con¬ 
science that Sir William Jenner had made a mistake, he 
would not have made the prescription up, because he 
should have known that the consequences would have 
been fatal. The point was that if the writing were clear 
and legible, the chemist might be excused for saying, “Sir 
William Jenner knows better than I do;” and so the 
prisoner might have been excused for saying, “ Mr. Wall 
knows better than I do.” But the difficulty was this— 
assuming “ sal ” to have been badly written, and that he 
was invited, as it were, to make a mistake, yet, knowing 
that it was a fatal dose, he ought to have looked carefully 
and made himself quite sure that he was reading the 
word correctly when he read “sal” for “sol.” If the 
jury believed that prisoner caused the death of Mr. Wall 
by criminal ignorance—for which there was no pre¬ 
tence—or through criminal inattention in misreading 
the prescription, they ought to find him guilty. As he- 
had said before, if either “sal” or “sol.” would have 
been a proper medicine, it would be difficult to say he 
was to be blamed for making the mistake ; but it must 
be recollected that while “ sol.” was an innocent dose, 
“sal” was a fatal one. His Lordship next commented 
on the prisoner’s conduct after he discovered he had 
made up the wrong medicine. In one respect his con¬ 
duct was most praiseworthy. Considering the tempta¬ 
tion there was to destroy the prescription, which would 
have made it difficult to establish the case, it was most 
creditable to him that he resisted that temptation. It was 
manifest that, with one exception, he did his very best to- 
rectify the mistake he made. But there was a matter 
to which Mr. Clark very properly called their attention. 
When prisoner found out his mistake, he ought at once 
to have rushed off—leaving the shop to take care of 
itself, or be plundered even—to endeavour to prevent 
the unfortunate man taking the dose he had prepared. 
But he did not. He first made another mixture, then 
found the boy Pirn, and sent him with it, and remained 
behind to mind the shop. It was his duty, as soon as he 
found out his mistake, to have immediately done all he 
could to obviate its consequences; so that, even if the 
jury believed he was not criminally negligent in mak¬ 
ing up the medicine, and yet thought he did not do his. 
best to prevent the deceased taking it. they would, in 
his opinion, be obliged to find him guilty. 
The jury, after nearly two hours’ absence, returned a 
verdict of “Not Guilty.” 
The Keeping of Poisons.—Attempt to Poison ey 
Tartar Emetic. 
On Tuesday, March 12th, Walter Thompson, 16, was. 
charged at the Clerkenwell Police Court with felo¬ 
niously attempting to poison the Eev. C. A. W. Eeade, 
late curate of Skeyton, near Norfolk, and his family. 
The Eev. Complainant said : I am a clergyman of the: 
Church of England. The prisoner had been in my ser¬ 
vice as page for some time. I dismissed him summarily 
on Tuesday last for some improper practices that had 
come to my knowledge, and told him he would have to- 
go home by the seven o’clock train the following morn¬ 
ing. On Wednesday morning I got up at six o’clock 
and accompanied him to Tottenham, where I gave him 
his third-class ticket, and also money to take him 
home by cart. On my return home that day, about two. 
o’clock, my wife opened the door, and said, “ Oh, I hope: 
you have not taken any brandy.” I said, “ No; why ?” 
And she said, “Because Elizabeth, the cook, says it is. 
poisoned by Walter.” My wife then brought me the 
brandy bottle, and it looked very muddy. Prior to this it 
was clear, like ordinary brandy. After dinner I went up to 
my dressing-room, where I keep thirty or forty kinds of 
medicine, it having struck me that the prisoner might 
have used some of the poisons that were there. I looked 
over them carefully, and found that the one containing* 
tartarized antimony or tartar emetic had been tampered 
with. I noticed that some had been taken out, some of 
the flour being on the edge of the bottle and the cork 
half in. I sent for a police-constable, and showed 
him the state of the bottles, and in the evening I took 
the brandy bottle to a surgeon, and asked him to analyse 
the contents for antimony. He did so, and the result of 
the test was that antimony was found. The brandy 
bottle was kept in a drawer on the sideboard with other 
spirits. It was always unlocked, and, the key being 
lost, it was open to any one. The medicines were open 
on the chimney-shelf in my dressing-room. 
The Magistrate: Do you say that you leave the poi¬ 
sons open to any one to tamper with ? 
Witness: Yes; but no one has touched the bottles 
before. 
Can you say about how much of the poison has been 
