186 
MEDICAL OFFICER’S REPORT. 
make inquiries, found rice, corrosive sublimate, jalap, and oxalic acid in different papers 
in the same drawer, and all under the care of an ignorant hoy.” 
And, beyond the limits of the petty village shopkeeping, the careless custody of 
poisons leads sometimes to their being sold for other matters, and used, even on a larger 
scale, accordingly: orpiment (arsenical yellow) sold instead of the milder poison of 
chrome yellow, or instead of turmeric, or instead of mustard, and used as turmeric, to 
colour buns,—or 12 lb. of white arsenic sold instead of 12 lb. of plaster of Paris, and 
used in this supposed capacity to adulterate lozenges,—or 30 lb. of sugar of lead sent 
(perhaps instead of alum) to a miller’s, and used for admixture with eighty sacks of 
iiour. Dr. Taylor gives cases where occurrences such as these have led to wholesale 
poisoning; the Bradford case, for instance, where arsenical lozenges killed seventeen 
persons, and severely injured 183 others; and the Stourbridge case, where, some years 
since, under the circumstances I have just described, no fewer than 500 persons were 
more or less affected (none fatally, but some with great severity) by the poisoning of 
their bread with lead. And in illustration, not necessarily of the mistaken sale, but 
assuredly of the most wanton and reckless use of a poison, he describes how, seven years 
ago, the 340 children of the Norwood school took with their morning milk and water 
about one grain of arsenic each, and suffered, of course, sharp symptoms of arsenical 
poisoning, in consequence of a workman’s having left in the boiler, which he was 
employed to clean, as much arsenite of soda as contained about nine pounds of arsenic. 
“ Fortunately (and this accident saved 340 lives) only four gallons of the poisoned water 
were drawn from the boiler on the following morning. Each child had taken a quantity 
just within the fatal dose of arsenic.” 
I venture to submit that the above-described state of things deserves the particular 
consideration of Parliament. For the unrestrictedness with which at present the retail 
trade in drugs and poisons is conducted, confers, in a curious way and to an extent which 
could scarcely have been foreseen, irresponsibility even for mischievous acts. Apparently 
the view which the Legislature has taken of the matter has been, that the trade might 
safely be left unshackled by special regulations, and open without special licence to all 
who chose to undertake its practice ; for that the common law would suffice to protect 
the public by punishing any druggist who by his own incompetence or carelessness, or 
by the employment of an incompetent or careless agent, should have caused any personal 
harm. But the view taken by the administrators of the law has not corresponded with 
that supposed view' of the legislature, and the absence of special enactment on the sub¬ 
ject seems in most instances to be accepted as a ground for concluding that a druggist’s 
carelessness and malpractice, however extreme in degree, and however fatal in result, are 
not in the eye of the law criminal carelessness and malpractice. Thus, in nearly all the 
scandalous cases which Dr. Taylor describes, the tradesman whose ill-conducted business 
led to loss or endangerment of life escaped with absolute impunity. “ In nearly all cases 
which are the subject of inquests or trials for manslaughter, it will be observed that 
proof of negligence is not sufficient; the proof must amount to gj-oss ov culpable negli¬ 
gence in law, or the wrongdoer will escape. What gross or culpable negligence is has 
not yet been defined, but we learn from the verdicts of juries that the keeping of poisons 
and medicines similar in appearance on the same shelf close to each other is not gross 
negligence ! So the selling of oxalic acid or nitre for Epsom salts, and the keeping of 
these substances in contiguous drawers or packets, unlabelled until the time of sale, and 
then labelling the poison as an innocent medicine, does not constitute culpable negli¬ 
gence ! The employment of youths of no experience in drugs, who cannot distinguish 
arsenic from calomel, magnesia, or plaster of Paris, or powdered opium from powdered 
rhubarb, or laudanum from tincture of rhubarb,—furnish, by the destruction of life, 
merely illustrations of unavoidable accident or misadventure, and not of gross negligence 
on the part of an employer !” Even in the Bradford case, where in 1858-9, 200 persons 
were poisoned, and seventeen of them fatally, through the sale of arsenic for plaster of 
Paris, it was ruled that no legal carelessness had been committed,—no legal carelessness, 
though arsenic and plaster of Paris were kept in similar casks side by side, in a loft, with 
no evident label upon either of them,—no legal carelessness, though a boy who had but 
three weeks’ experience in the shop was sent to choose between these imperfectly dis¬ 
tinguished casks,—no legal carelessness, though the stuff which he brought down was 
given without the master’s examination to the man who was waiting to make it into 
lozenges. Evidently this state of things implies more than the Legislature can mean to 
