professor, taylor’s report on poisoning. 
175 
In a case in which I was consulted, and which led to a trial for murder at the Central 
Criminal Court, it was proved that powdered white arsenic was kept on a shelf near to 
bottles containing calomel and sugar, and other white powders resembling arsenic. A 
dose of four grains of calomel was prescribed for an infant late at night. Arsenic was 
supplied in place of calomel. The child died, and on examining the stomach, arsenic 
in powder, in quantity nearly corresponding to the above dose, was found in that organ, 
but no calomel. The child was dying from intussusception when the supposed calomel 
was given ; but the discovery of arsenic in the stomach, led to a charge of murder 
against the mother and grandmother who had had the care of the child, and had given 
to it its food and medicine during its illness. On proof of the facts above mentioned, 
i.e. that arsenic and calomel were kept on contiguous shelves in the same shop, and that 
no calomel was found in the body, and no motive for poisoning could be suggested, the 
learned judge stopped the case, and the jury acquitted the accused of the charge.* 
The dispenser who compounded the medicines in this shop, strongly denied that any 
mistake had been made. The following is an extract from his evidence :— 
“ The powder was white. I know that white arsenic was kept in the shop, hut I did 
not sell any arsenic that night. By the Court .—I should not know calomel from arsenic 
by its appearance. I don’t know whether arsenic is rougher in appearance than calomel. 
I never examined them together. I cannot say whether calomel being mixed with sugar 
would give it still more the appearance of arsenic. Mr. Clarkson remarked that he 
thought it was fortunate for the public that this gentleman (the witness) had not suc¬ 
ceeded to the retail drug business of his uncle.” 
The late Dr. Snow communicated to me the following case :—The parents of a child 
sent to the shop of a provincial druggist for a pennyworth of magnesia. It happened 
that the druggist was not in the shop at the time, and his assistant, a youth, dispensed 
arsenic by mistake for magnesia. The poison w r as given to the child ; the usual symp¬ 
toms followed, and the child died. 
A superintendent of police, in endeavouring to trace out the sale of poison in reference 
to a case of alleged murder, informed me that on entering the shop of a provincial 
druggist on a market day he saw on the counter a bottle of white arsenic in powder near 
several other bottles containing white powders, which he was informed were of a medici¬ 
nal nature. 
Most of the cases above mentioned may be traced partly to carelessness, and partly to 
incompetence and gross ignorance, on the part of those who are allowed to retail drugs 
to the public. The injurious effects of such incompetence and ignorance on the health 
of the public, and the great danger to life, are increased a hundredfold by reason of the 
carelessness displayed in keeping innocent medicines and poisonous compounds resem¬ 
bling each other on shelves or drawers in close proximity. The plea for this practice is 
that laudanum is a drug as much or even more in request than tincture of rhubarb or 
senna, and it requires to be as much within the reach of the vendor. The bottles are 
commonly of the same size and shape, with similar labels; and the system of labelling 
usually adopted, namely, the use of abbreviated Latin words, is no doubt a fertile source 
of mistakes. Three bottles of similar shape may be thus labelled, —Tinct. Opii (Lauda¬ 
num), Tinct. Kiiei, Tinct. Senn^e. Each label, as I have had occasion to notice, com¬ 
mences with a similar abbreviation ; and a bottle containing laudanum (Tinct. Opii), 
turned a little on one side, as the liquids have a similar colour, may easily be mistaken 
for one of the other two. The bottles may sometimes be misplaced, and thus, without 
looking at the label, but deceived by the position of the bottle, the poison may be dis¬ 
pensed for the medicine. 
Among those ignorant persons who keep village general shops for draperies and 
groceries, and who deal in certain drugs and poisons, the mistakes are not only more 
frequent but more serious in their consequences to health and life. It would be difficult 
to define to what extent the public health suffers in this respect; for symptoms of 
poisoning are so apt to be mistaken for bowel complaints, fits, or convulsions, especially 
when death is not the immediate result, or a person has been for some time ill, that 
such cases are generally set down to disease, and the deaths are registered accord¬ 
ingly. A closer scrutiny would probably show that poison carelessly sold, in a state of 
* The Queen against Dore and Spry, Central Criminal Court, August, 1848. See also 
‘ London Medical Gazette/ vol. xlii. 1848, p. 888. 
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