530 
SALE OF POISONS. 
Local Secretaries; this is much to be regretted, as the aid afforded by an 
energetic Secretary is of the highest service to the Executive. Considerable- 
benefits accrue in forming local associations, where the trade is brought together 
to discuss, in a social manner, questions relating to their profession and to the 
protection of their interests; scales of prices might thus be arranged, which, 
with honourable men, would lessen the evils of competition, which in the case of 
medicine is a practice much to be deprecated. 
Let us remember how our great benefactor toiled for us ; the honoured name 
of Jacob Bell must ever prove an incentive to us to persevere in the noble 
example he has set us; others, of the highest position in our profession, are still 
pushing forward our interests, and that of the whole body of the trade. Let 
this urge us on in the good work we have now commenced ; with the encourage¬ 
ment of the medical profession, the public, and the press, we need not fear the 
clamour of men of no professional calibre, whose rise into notoriety has been 
simultaneous with that of the United Society . 
I have never yet met with a non-member of our body who has not professed 
the greatest confidence in the Society, and their acknowledged right to the sup¬ 
port of the entire trade. I am fully assured that they will be with us in our 
Parliamentary campaign ; but we must organize a basis of operation that will 
defy the noisy and undignified mischief, promulgated by a mere fragment of 
jealous and officious malcontents. 
I am, Sir, faithfully yours, 
J. S. F. Richardson, F.C.S. 
Leicester, March 21 , 1865 . 
SALE OF POISONS. 
TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
Sir,—I wish to recommend to the attention of your readers, and of Chemists 
generally, the Report of the Edinburgh Committee on the “ Question of Poison¬ 
ing and the Means of Prevention,” published in the March number of this journal. 
The subject has evidently been carefully studied, and the Report contains the 
most practical and common-sense view of the question I have yet seen published. 
They have undoubtedly fixed upon the true cause of all the mistakes in dis¬ 
pensing or retailing, when they say that “ the source of the errors lies altogether 
in the mind of the wrong-doer for there can be no question that “ a mistake 
as to the substance,” or the supplying one article in place of another, arises 
entirely from what is called u absence of mind,” and from the attention not 
being directed exclusively to the business in hand. 
There are, however, one or two other causes which have’not been noticed, and 
these are, first, the habit we all get into, more or less, of trusting to the physical 
appearance of the substance itself, or of the vessel in which it is contained, or 
the place in which it is usually kept, instead of reading the label upon it. I 
nave no hesitation in saying that in every case where laudanum has been sup¬ 
plied instead of tincture of rhubarb, or any other dangerous article in place of a 
harmless one, the party doing it has never read the label; but the mind, being 
pre-occupied, the article is supplied mechanically, with the firm conviction that it 
is the right one. In this state of things no sandpaper, or diagonal, or per¬ 
pendicular, or any other fanciful arrangement of labels, will ever be of any 
service, but the only remedy is to make it an invariable rule to read the label in 
every case before supplying the substance required. 
Another cause is to be found in the alphabetical arrangement usually adopted 
in the shop and dispensary, whereby two substances nearly resembling each 
other in appearance stand close together,—the one possessing poisonous or dange- 
