professor taylor’s report on poisoning. 173 
cines or drugs should be distinctly labelled, and not kept on the same shelves close to 
others which were not poisonous. 
A servant was sent to a village shop for an ounce of powdered rhubarb. The person 
to whom she applied is described as grocer, draper, and druggist to the village. The 
grocer weighed from a small bottle half an ounce of a powder which he said was all that 
he had of that kind. The girl remarked that the powder was very dark in colour, which the 
grocer admitted, but made no further observation. A teaspoonful of this powder with 
a few drops of laudanum was given to a young woman for whom the rhubarb had been 
prescribed. In a short time she was seized with symptoms of poisoning by opium, and died 
the same evening. The powder purchased as rhubarb was found to be powdered opium, 
without any admixture, and eight or ten grains of opium in powder were found in the 
stomach of deceased on a post-mortem examination of the body. 
The statement made at the coroner’s inquest by the person -who was guilty of this 
serious mistake shows the great danger to which the lives of the public are exposed by 
allowing ignorant and incompetent persons to sell powerful medicines capable of acting 
as poisons. This event occurred on the 29th April, and the draper-druggist, when called 
before the coroner’s jury, stated “that he took his shop on the 9th of April, with the 
stock of groceries, draperies, and drugs, including the powdered opium; that he under¬ 
stood from the outgoing tenant that the powder was rhubarb, and he himself supposed 
so from seeing the word ‘ Turc.’ on the label. He had not a thorough acquaintance with 
drugs, and sold the powdered opium ignorantly.” The jury found that he had been 
guilty of culpable negligence and ignorance, and returned a verdict of manslaughter 
against him.* 
This case furnishes an instance of the incompetence of village shopkeepers to deal in 
poisons. The bottle which contained the powdered opium w r as thus labelled, “Pulv. 
Opii Turc. Opt.” Because rhubarb also comes from Turkey, and is sometimes labelled 
“Pulv. Rhei Turc. Opt.,” the draper had fixed upon the word “ Turc.” as indicative of 
rhubarb pow r der only. If, as he stated at the inquest, his predecessor in the business 
handed over to him the contents of this bottle as rhubarb, it is not improbable, as 
rhubarb is a popular medicine for children, that some may have previously died from 
this complete ignorance of the nature of drugs. The two powders may be easily dis¬ 
tinguished by smell and colour, by any one having the slightest acquaintance with 
drugs. 
Another case which occurred in the country furnishes an illustration of carelessness 
in a druggist and incompetence in a shopkeeper. A mother wishing to give a dose of 
tincture of rhubarb to her child applied for this medicine at a small village shop kept by 
a woman who dealt in apples, sweetmeats, spirits of nitre, tincture of rhubarb, castor 
oil, etc. It does not appear that laudanum was among the articles which she professed 
to sell. After two doses of the medicine had been given to it, the child was seized with 
the usual symptoms of poisoning by opium, and died in the course of a few hours. The 
liquid sold at the village shop as tincture of rhubarb was found to be tincture of opium ; 
and it then transpired that the shopkeeper had procured it of a regular druggist in a 
neighbouring town. It had been sold by an apprentice to this druggist as tincture of 
rhubarb. The coroner’s jury found that the deceased had been accidentally poisoned by 
an overdose of laudanum; and the apprentice who had made the mistake was discharged 
with a caution.f 
It would be easy to accumulate instances of this kind, but those above mentioned may 
suffice to show that by ignorant, incompetent, or careless persons, life is frequently 
endangered by reason of opium in tincture or powder being mistaken for rhubarb. 
Antimonial wine is occasionally employed by the poorer classes as a medicine for 
children. In the following case, colchicum wine, a powerful poison, was supplied by 
mistake for the medicine. A mother was advised to give to her child, suffering from 
diarrhoea, a dose of antimonial wine. She applied for it at a regular druggist’s shop, 
and she was served by a youth, 1G years of age, who was not acquainted with the nature 
of drugs. Several doses of the wine were given to the child, which led to its death on 
* See Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, June, 1858, p. 627. 
f See Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, April, 1859, p. 528. Other cases, similar 
in their details, are reported in the same journal for September, 1856, p. 195, and October, 
1863, p. 186. 
