THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
YOL. YI.—No. IY.—OCTOBER 1st, 1864. 
THE SIXTH REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF THE 
PRIVY COUNCIL, WITH APPENDIX. 
Embodied in a “blue book” bearing the above title, we have one of the 
most important documents concerning “ Poisoning, and the Dispensing , Vending, 
and Keeping of Poisons,” which has for many years appeared; it will be read 
with interest by all chemists, with surprise by many, and seems to be big with 
the fate of pharmacy. 
Mr. Simon, under instruction of the Lords of the Privy Council, proceeds 
first to ascertain to what extent accidental or criminal poisoning causes death 
in England, and what security the public enjoys against an indefinite multipli¬ 
cation of such cases of poisoning. He puts down the suicides by poison during 
a period of four years at 509, the deaths by accidental poisoning in the same 
period 1059. Thus far the report proceeds on certain data, and then, diverging 
to conjecture, presumes “a considerable though not ascertained proportion” of the 
1880 murders occurring in four years to have been committed by poison. We 
think it would have been better, and quite easy, here to have given the exact 
number. On his next point, some of our readers will be inclined to dispute the 
conclusion that many accidental cases of poisoning occur and are not distinguished 
from deaths by natural causes. 
It is however most important to consider how far carelessness and incompe¬ 
tence exist among dispensers of medicine, with a view to remedying the evil; 
and to what extent unnecessary facilities are given for the purchase of poison for 
criminal purposes, or rather to what extent those facilities could be abridged 
without inconvenience to the public. 
The assistance of Dr. Taylor having been called in, he has handed a very 
lengthened report to the Medical Officer, opening at once with the indisputable 
assertion “ that a large number of persons wholly unacquainted with the pro¬ 
perties of powerful drugs and medicines are allowed to retail them to the public, 
on demand, without any check or control.” lie then cites many accidents which 
have arisen from this cause, frequently referring to the reports contained in 
former numbers of this Journal for authority. Dr. Taylor bears testimony to 
the desire of respectable druggists, both in town and country, to throw “ every im¬ 
pediment in the way of the purchase of poison,” but dwells largely on the care¬ 
less custody of poisons as a fertile source of danger to the public. Our readers 
will have the opportunity of judging for themselves how far, as a body, drug¬ 
gists are open to animadversion on this point; but there is one thing we cannot 
pass without notice, namely the alleged practice of trusting rather to the posi¬ 
tion of the bottle on its shelf than the label it bears as to the nature of its contents. 
VOL. VI. M 
