MEDICAL OFFICER’S REPORT. 187 
sanction; it implies not merely that the right-doing druggist shall be free from inter¬ 
ference, but that the wrong-doing druggist shall he almost secure from punishment. 
Dr. Taylor concludes his report with suggestions which deserve to have much weight, 
as to the reforms which are desirable in the conduct of pharmaceutical business. Ilis 
fundamental opinion, that poisons, and medicines likely to act as poisons, ought not to 
be sold in retail except by properly educated persons, and under some other reasonable 
restrictions as regards both seller and purchaser, is an opinion which I submit for con¬ 
sideration, as one in which I entirely concur. And it seems to me that this object might 
be attained without giving the drug trade any reasonable ground of complaint, and with¬ 
out inconveniencing the public as regards the purchasability of non-poisonous drugs. 
Facilities might be given to druggists to divide themselves into an upper and a lower 
class. At first such a division might be made by an enactment constituting into an 
upper class all who had previously passed an examination as Pharmaceutical Chemists or 
as apothecaries; perhaps with the further addition of all who at the time of the making 
of the enactment should be in bond fide practice as druggists on their own account, pro¬ 
vided their trade as druggists were conducted separately from all other trade ; and, 
subsequently to the first constitution of this upper class, admission into it might be 
obtained on examination before some appointed authority or authorities. To persons of 
this class (but with express exclusion of general shopkeepers) the office of selling 
poisons might be restricted. And the purchasability of poisons by the public might at 
the same time be made effectually subject to the rule which now ineffectually relates to 
the purchase of arsenic ;—that no such sale shall be made except with full registration 
of the buyer’s name and residence, and of the time, quantity, and proposed purpose of 
his buying; nor, even thus, to any person unknown to the seller, unless in presence of a 
witness acquainted with both seller and buyer. But whether or not provisions like these 
may seem to the Legislature fit and proper for enactment, I must submit that, with or 
without such enactments, one particular act of legislation is urgently wanted in the 
matter; an act, namely, which, either by its own language, or by empowering some 
department of the Government to make regulations in the matter, shall directly or 
indirectly provide for the establishment of a legal criterion as to what is culpable care¬ 
lessness in the sale of drugs and poisons, and shall thus render every such carelessness an 
offence punishable at law. 
Before closing this section of my report, I beg leave to bring under particular notice, 
as connected with the present subject—first, the statements which, in relation to manu¬ 
facturing towns,* I submitted two years ago concerning the destructive practice of drugging 
infants with opium, and, secondly, the statements which are contained in Dr. Hunter’s 
appended report (No. 14, already adverted to) concerning the use of opium in our prin¬ 
cipal marsh districts. “ There can (says Dr. Hunter) be no doubt of the truth of the 
horrid statement made by almost every surgeon in the marsh land, that there was not a 
labourer’s house in which the bottle of opiate was not to be seen, and not a child but 
who got it in some form. In other countries, where women work away from home, as 
in the factory towns, the children are drugged by the nurses, and one need not be sur¬ 
prised to find the same plan adopted here; but other circumstances combine to render it 
a common practice to push this drugging system to an extent known only in the districts 
in question. The painful rheumatisms and neuralgia which still continue to be common 
in the Fens [f.e. among elder persons, but probably without any suspicion that the infants 
suffer from them] have been generally treated by the free use of opium, and with this 
drug the whole people have become thoroughly familiar. The wholesale druggists report 
that they send immense quantities to these countries, and the retail druggists often dis¬ 
pense so much as 200 lbs. a year.f It is sold in pills or penny sticks, and a well-accus- 
* Fourth Keport; pp. 32-35, and App. IY. 
f Dr. Thudichum gives me the following curious information as to the quantity of opium 
annually sold at one country town in Lincolnshire :—“ Seven druggists in the town of 
Spalding sell 27 stone 3?) lb. of opium, partly in the form of laudanum. There are 21,000 
souls in the town and district of Spalding (last Census) supplied by these druggists. This 
gives a consumption of opium of 127 grains per head per annum. A small portion of the 
opium is used for sheep during lambing season. Allowing the 27 grains of every 127 to 
cover that purpose, which is probably an excessive estimate, there remains the startling 
circumstance that the consumption of opium in the Spalding district amounts to about 100 
grains per individual of the population per annum. The opium is used for eating by adults, 
