PROFESSOR ALFRED S. TAYLOR’S REPORT ON POISONING, AND THE 
DISPENSING, VENDING, AND KEEPING OF POISONS. 
H.— TO WHAT EXTENT IS INJURY OCCASIONED BY THE CARELESSNESS AND 
INCOMPETENCE OF PERSONS EMPLOYED IN RETAILING DRUGS? 
In reference to this question, I understand that the answer should apply to injury 
affecting health and life, and that the retailing of drugs refers particularly to the dispens¬ 
ing and vending of drugs and medicine. 
Considering this question in its broadest aspect, the first point to which I would refer 
is, that a large number of persons wholly unacquainted with the properties of powerful 
drugs and medicines, are allowed to retail them to the public, on demand, without any 
check or control. Persons who have had no professional education as druggists, and 
acting as oilmen, grocers, or village shopkeepers, keep for sale laudanum, tincture of 
rhubarb, senna, black draughts, etc., and either from carelessness in placing the bottles 
containing these medicines near to each other, or from ignorance, supply laudanum for the 
tinctures above mentioned, and thus either injure health or destroy life. A friend of 
mine having sent to a village shop where drugs were sold, for an ounce of tincture of 
rhubarb, was supplied with laudanum in place of it, and having swallowed it, narrowly 
escaped with his life. The medicinal tinctures above mentioned are similar in colour to 
laudanum, and are therefore liable to be mistaken for it; the odour is, however, very 
different. When it is considered that the bottles are for convenience of retail sale kept 
near to each other, and generally on the same shelf, and further that the proprietors of 
the shop frequently entrust the sale of them to boys and girls, some of whom cannot 
read, it is not surprising that fatal mistakes should be frequently made. The case which 
I have related above is the type of many which occur annually, but of which the public 
hear but little, because, as recoveries are numerous, no inquiries are instituted. Even 
when death takes place there is a general disposition to exonerate the chemist from blame, 
as will be perceived by two of the following cases. 
The first occurred recently. An infant died from the effects of a dose of laudanum 
administered by its mother in mistake for tincture of rhubarb. A servant lad was sent 
with a written message for threepennyworth of tincture of rhubarb to the shop of a 
druggist in a country town. The proprietor himself measured out the liquid, and gave 
it to the lad. Half a teaspoonful administered by the mother killed the child in a few 
hours, with the usual symptoms of poisoning by opium. On examining the liquid 
remaining in the bottle it was found to consist of pure laudanum. The verdict was to 
the effect that death had resulted from a dose of laudanum given by mistake. 
This case occurred at Wigan in January of the current year, and I am indebted to 
Mr. Grimshawe, the coroner, for a full account of the particulars.* The mistake appeared 
to have arisen from carelessness on the part of the druggist, and not from ignorance, and 
it presents a characteristic feature of all such fatal errors in dispensing or vending medi¬ 
cines, namely, the positive denial, as a rule, that any mistake has been made. The 
druggist made the following statement at the inquest: “The boy came to the shop, and 
asked for threepennyworth of tincture of rhubarb, and 1 gave him what I thought was 
the tincture of rhubarb, and I think so still, for I do not believe I gave him laudanum 
at all. I have no reason to think I gave laudanum, and nothing has occurred to my 
mind to lead me to think so.” A juror asked, “ Is the tincture of rhubarb bottle kept 
near that containing laudanum ? ” Druggist. “ They are near together; one or two off 
each other. One bottle is a little larger than the other.” The bottle and its contents 
were clearly traced to the druggist’s shop. A medical man called in to see the child, 
found it dying under the symptoms usually caused by laudanum, and on asking to see 
the bottle from which the dose of medicine had been given, he found in it nothing but 
laudanum. This strong denial of a mistake from inattention or carelessness, in face of 
facts which prove that a mistake must have been made, has, in more than one instance, 
led to unfounded charges of murder against innocent persons who have had the care of 
children. The jury exonerated the druggist, attributing the result to accident, and not 
to gross carelessness. They suggested, however, that bottles containing poisonous medi- 
* See Report in £ Wigan Examiner/ Jan. 8, 18G4. 
