MEDICAL AND PHARMACEUTICAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
287 
with any prescription that may be brought to hitn for dispensing ; his duty begins and 
ends with the prescription, and although, thanks to an advanced intelligence in the 
ranks of our profession, there are few that are unacquainted with the doses and proper¬ 
ties of the medicines we dispense, it is not our province to check the medical man in 
his written orders; the thousand little cares and anxieties that are entailed on us in 
carefully carrying out our duties are sufficient sources of responsibility without adding 
another that strictly belongs to the doctor. Should we refuse to prepare medicines 
duly (so far as we can judge) authorized by a medical man, we should only be adding 
to our already numerous responsibilities.” 
The ‘ Medical Times and Gazette.’ in commenting on the case, gives the evidence of 
Mr. Stowell, who was described at the adjourned inquest as “an M.D. of the Univer¬ 
sity of New York, and an M.R.C.S. of London,” as that of a chemist and triumphantly 
observes,—“We desire to hear the pharmaceutical opinion of this case officially, and 
meanwhile say, Take your line and keep to it. If you are to prescribe, please to study 
medicine, so that there may be no chance of giving Linum catharticum to pregnant 
women.” 
MEDIGAL AND PHARMACEUTICAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHARAIACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
Sir,—The serious responsibility of medical general practitioners and pnar- 
maceutists, revealed by the result of the case against Messrs. Clay and Abra¬ 
ham, is sufficient to point out the expediency of carefully scrutinizing charges 
of error that may from time to time be made against dispensers of medicine, 
and of distinctly recording cases where fraud is either proved or suspected 
on the part of those who make the accusation. 
With this view, not finding any record of the case in the ‘ Lancet ’ or the 
* Pharmaceutical Journal,’ I beg to forward you the outline of what was 
proved at an inquest held at Einchley, by the late Mr. Wakley, in the 
beginning of the year 1855, as follows :— 
On the 16th of December, 1854, the driver of the Einchley mail went into 
the open surgery of Dr. Niell, of Aldersgate Street, and asked for four doses 
of Epsom salts. There were two assistants in the surgery, one of them a stu¬ 
dent at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Eincling that no salts were put up and 
that the driver was pressed for time, they jointly occupied themselves in 
weighing and wrapping the salts, sealing the packages with the surgery wax. 
Shortly afterwards they were accused of having supplied oxalic acid in¬ 
stead of Epsom salts, as a person at Einchley who had sent the driver of the 
mail for the salts died from having taken the contents of one of the packages, 
and the three remaining packages were proved to contain oxalic acid. After 
repeated adjournments of the inquest, it was established that the packages 
left by the deceased had been resealed by wax unlike that kept in the surgery, 
that lie had just previously bought half a pound of oxalic acid (which he was 
in the habit of possessing for trade purposes), and that his life was insured ; 
moreover, in the folds of the wrappers of the three packets so left containing 
the oxalic acid, were found the crystals of Epsom salts. The jury returned a 
verdict of Suicide. 
The facts here narrated can be easily proved by reference to the testimony 
of those who appeared at the inquest. 
The foregoing case is important, because if it again occurred in a surgery 
or a chemist’s shop to-morrow, the cunning which threw the onus of disproving 
a mistake upon those supplying the medicine might be repeated, and unless 
good fortune enabled a practitioner to show the fraud, his assistant would 
probably be tried for manslaughter and he himself possibly ruined by a 
monstrous fine. 
It seems to me the more necessary that the Einchley case should be brought 
