328 
PHARMACY IN AMERICA. 
[to the editor of the pharmaceutical journal. 
Sir,—The following paragraph, taken from a recent letter of the “ Special 
Commissioner 1 ’ to the ‘ Daily Telegraph’ may, at the present juncture, be worth 
more than a passing notice. The letter is headed, as usual, u America in the 
Midst of War,” and is inserted in the issue of the above journal for October 
13th, 1864. After complaining that fifty cents were asked by “ a gentleman 
in a druggist’s shop” for a twopenny box of Palmer’s vesuvians, which proved 
on trial to be “ hopelessly mildewed, and wouldn’t even smoulder,’’ the writer 
goes on to say— u Very nearly the same thing happened to me at Niagara. I 
wanted some seidlitz powders. The proprietor of perhaps one of the most woe¬ 
begone little apothecary’s shops on the American side I ever saw anywhere, 
declined to sell me less than a ; family box,’ costing two and a half dollars, al¬ 
though he had just sold ten cents' worth of laudanum to a barefooted girl, who 
brought a teacup for the poison. When I opened the ‘ family box,’ ” etc. 
On reading the above I could not help thinking that if this is the state of 
the poison question on the other side of the Atlantic, we, of the old country, 
have little cause to complain about the want of legislative anxiety in our own 
body, for the safe “ dispensing, vending, and keeping of poisons.” 
With reference to the purchase of the seidlitz powders, the writer in question 
was a second time unfortunate. “ When,” says he, “I opened the ‘family 
box,’ I found the damp had effected an entrance, and that the contents were 
utterly worthless.” I am quite sure, Sir, that we, on this side, shall all feel 
sorry for the disappointments of “our special commissioner.” 
I remain, Sir, yours obediently, 
W. WlLMOTT. 
27, Bishopsgate Within , October 21, 1864. 
PHARMACEUTICAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
Sir,—As several correspondents in the Journal, as well as private corre¬ 
spondents of my own, are very strenuously advocating a system of mutual 
assurance to meet any expenses which might result from a prosecution under 
Lord Campbell’s Act, I wish to offer a few observations in opposition to any 
plan of the kind. Before the verdict had been issued in the late Liverpool 
case, several friends foreseeing the inevitable and disastrous nature of the 
verdict, suggested one or other of the protection schemes which have since 
appeared in print, but a few minutes’ discussion was sufficient to show the 
dangers into which we should plunge by adopting any such course,—that in 
fact we should be creating a great evil to get rid of a comparatively small one. 
I have subsequently taken the opinion of an eminent solicitor, whose views 
perfectly coincide with my own. He says it would be most impolitic and in¬ 
judicious to adopt any such course. It would invite prosecution on the part 
of those who, under existing circumstances, would not think of such a thing. 
We should then indeed become a company, and fairly open to legal proceed¬ 
ings. He instanced the London Omnibus Company as an analogous case. 
Before it existed, a process against an independent omnibus proprietor was 
never heard of, though disasters arising from various causes w r ere not unfre¬ 
quent. But now that a large portion of the omnibus traffic is in the hands of 
a company, the company is in a constant state of siege by prosecutors on all 
sorts of pretexts. That is just what we should draw upon ourselves if we took 
