288 
MEDICAL AND PHARMACEUTICAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
before your readers, on account of a passage I find in Professor Taylor’s “ Re¬ 
port on Poisoning,” printed in the last issue of your Journal, as follows :— 
“ Several cases have come to my knowledge in which oxalic acid has been 
retailed in place of Epsom salts. In one of them, which occurred in London 
some years since, a man was sent to the shop of a respectable druggist for 
four ounce packets of Epsom salts. He was served with four packets, labelled, 
as usual, e Purified Epsom Salts.’ In the evening, the gentleman who had 
sent for the salts took the contents of one of these packets; he was seized 
with the usual symptoms of poisoning by oxalic acid, and died in a few hours. 
I examined the contents of the stomach and found oxalic acid therein, and I 
also found that the three unopened packets contained oxalic acid, labelled as 
above described.” 
INTow if these remarks in Dr. Taylor’s report refer to the Finchley case, 
they require to be supplemented by a notice of the fact that a verdict of 
‘ suicide ’ was returned by the jury who investigated it. 
With Professor Taylor’s suggestions that none but educated persons should 
be allowed to vend poisons I for one heartily concur, so far as restriction is 
possible (I confess I see a difficulty in forbidding a colourman to supply white 
lead to a painter or the like), and I firmly believe that an improved Phar¬ 
macy Act, placing all existing dispensers of medicine now in business (who 
are not qualified medical men) upon a register, and compelling their succes¬ 
sors to pass the examination of the Pharmaceutical Society, would be the best 
obtainable security for the public. It would be advisable, no doubt, to provide 
that, for the purposes of legislation, a schedule of articles to be deemed poisons 
should be drawn, and the sale of these and the dispensing of prescriptions re¬ 
stricted to apothecaries and bond fide chemists and druggists at present in 
business, as w T ell as to those who may be duly examined hereafter. 
It may be as well also to call attention to the following quotations from 
Professor Taylor’s report:— 
“ A characteristic feature of all fatal errors in dispensing or vending medi¬ 
cines is the positive denial, as a rule, that any mistake has been made.” 
“ This strong denial of a mistake from inattention or carelessness in face 
of facts which prove that a mistake must have been made, has, in more than 
one instance, led to unfounded charges of murder against innocent persons 
who have had the care of children.” 
“There is also another source of mischief which may arise from these mis¬ 
takes. As a dispenser acting bond fide is never aware when a mistake has 
been made, and almost always denies it in the strongest language, it follows 
that those who have been in attendance up to the last hour are exposed to a 
false accusation of administering poison. If poison is found in the body or 
in the medicine, this is considered of itself a sufficient proof of the charge ; 
and even in the absence of motive or moral circumstances will not always 
suffice to show the charge is groundless. The proof of the mistake, if denied, 
will in general rest upon presumption. A false charge of murder arising out 
of careless dispensing is easily made and hard to be disproved, as there can 
rarely be immediate access to the bottles or drawers of a shop to establish 
the fact upon undeniable evidence.” 
Surely the learned professor is here rather hard upon general medical prac¬ 
titioners and pharmaceutists. 
Does not Mrs. Gamp, redolent of snuff and gin, often find her way in a half- 
fuddled state to the surgery of a general practitioner or the shop of the chemist? 
Is it so very certain that when engaged in unfurling her umbrella she never puts 
down the parcel that has been given her and takes up another ? Is it so very 
clear that she is more unlikely to make a mistake than a practised dispenser ? 
If so, is she less likely to make a “positive denial” than he? That “false 
