188 
PHARMACEUTICAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
tomed shop will serve 300 or 400 customers with the article on a Saturday night. The 
druggists thought their largest customers were not the villagers, or people of the little 
town in which the shop was, but rather the inhabitants of small hamlets or isolated 
farms in the Fens. Opium is often asked for under some cant name, and the idea of it 
is as of a forbidden jollity. The quantity which an old opium-eater will take has often 
been reported (about half an ouuce a day is common) and finds its limit rather in the 
cost than in the strength of the drug. A man in South Lincolnshire complained that 
his wife had spent £100 in opium since he married. A man may be seen occasionally 
asleep in a field leaning on his hoe. He starts when approached, and wmrks vigorously 
for a while. A man who is setting about a hard job takes his pill as a preliminary, and 
many never take their beer without dropping a piece of opium into it. To meet the 
popular taste, but to the extreme inconvenience of strangers, narcotic agents are put into 
the beer by the brewers or sellers. Half a century ago the growth of poppies for the London 
drug market was conducted in this light land. Then the husbandman took poppy drink 
with him to the field; and now, although the cultivation of the article for sale is almost 
abandoned, the poppy capsule forms the principal ingredient of the herb teas and do¬ 
mestic medicines of the neighbourhood. With such familiarity with the drug, no 
wonder that every one is ready to use it to quiet a crying child, though only to ensure 
its crying again as soon as awake. Opium eaters are said to be always proselytizers, and 
will even give a child opium behind the back of the mother or nurse. The favourite form 
for infants is called Godfrey’s Cordial, a mixture of opium, treacle, and infusion of sassafras. 
This is thickish, and is often fetched in a teacup. When the mother going to field-work 
deposits her child with a nurse, she thinks it best to leave her own bottle of Godfrey, 
because the preparations of the different shops vary, and there is not a little village shop 
in the country that sells anything that does not sell its own Godfrey. To push the sale 
of opiates in these little shops is the great aim of some enterprising wholesale merchants. 
By druggists it is considered 1 the leading article,’ and the profit on it is small when 
sold in a crude state. It has not unfrequently happened that a nurse has substituted 
her own Godfrey for her client’s, and, frightened at its effects, has summoned the 
surgeon, who finds half-a-dozen babies, some snoring, some squinting, all pallid and eye- 
sunken, lying about the room, all poisoned.” 
PHAEMACEUTIOAL HESPONS1BILITY. 
TO THE EDITOR OF TIIE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
Sir,—A correspondent in the last number of your Journal suggests that the 
sympathy of the Pharmaceutical profession should be expressed by a subscrip¬ 
tion to pay the damages and costs which we have lately incurred. A similar 
wish has been expressed privately by several friends, and one gentleman, prompt 
in the exercise of generous feelings, has sent us a post-office order. A cor¬ 
respondent of ‘ The Chemist and Druggist ’ has advocated the same course, and 
announced several subscriptions for the purpose. 
We appreciate very highly the sympathy of our brethren, and return our best 
thanks to those who have come forward spontaneously and generously to alle¬ 
viate our misfortune; but we take the earliest opportunity of requesting that 
you will be good enough to allow us to inform your readers that we do not 
desire, and should respectfully decline to accept, such an expression of their 
sympathy, welcome as that sympathy is. Heavy, and as we believe undeserved, 
as is the penalty that we have had to pay for the act or supposed act of 
another, we are thankful that we are able to bear it. 
We do however hope that the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society will 
take steps to obtain an alteration of the law, and we may take this opportunity 
and for drugging infants. Infant mortality in that district is 21,845, while in all England 
it was 17,731 out of 100,000 living. The population of Spalding had decreased during the 
last ten years. The quantity of opium does not include the opium used by the medical 
practitioners. The data regarding the quantities of opium sold at Spalding have been 
collected by Dr. E. Morris, of Spalding, and communicated to me.” 
