RECENT PROSECUTIONS POR SELLING METHYLATED SPIRIT. 
3 
Kingdom.’ Although this law is of a permissive character only, yet it allows full scope 
for the extensive application of the new system, and we trust that every opportunity 
will he seized for resorting to it, with a view of putting an end to the manifold defects 
and inconveniences of the present practice. 
“ We understand, with pleasure, that such an opportunity now occurs for introducing 
the metric decimal system into Medicine and Pharmacy, since the British Pharmacopoeia, 
published in January, 1864, is about to appear in a second edition. The objection formerly 
urged to the introduction of the metric system side by side with the imperial, in all the 
fonnulse for the preparation of drugs and chemicals, that the metric weights and mea¬ 
sures were not yet sanctioned by the Legislature, is now removed by the passing of the 
Act; and we hope, therefore, that your Council will give its sanction to the proposed 
useful addition. 
“ In submitting to you the desire of the Metric Committee of the British Association, 
that the knowledge of the Metric System may be pro/noted in Medicine and Pharmacy, 
■we would only add that, for international purposes, and especially for the use of foreign 
practitioners, and of British chemists in foreign countries, the ready comparison of the 
imperial with the metric weights and measures will be of great practical value ] and, 
moreover, will tend to give effect to a reform expected to be highly useful to this 
country, and of extensive influence in social and international intercourse. 
“We have the honour to be. Gentlemen, 
“ Your obedient servants, 
“John Barixg, F.K.S., LL.D., 
“ Chairman of the Committee. 
“James Yates, M.A., F.E.S., 
“ Member of the Committee.” 
AVith reference to this communication a resolution -was passed, “That the 
General Medical Council are not prepared to adojDt, in its full extent, the sug¬ 
gestion of the Metric Committee of the British Association, but the Council 
will direct that a complete comparative table of metric and imperial weights 
and measures, -with instructions for their mutual conversion, shall be inserted in 
the forthcoming edition of the British Pharmacopoeia.” 
THE IlECENT PROSECUTIONS FOR SELLING METHYLATED 
SPIRIT WITHOUT LICENCE. 
Many of our readers may be aware that a crusade is just now being carried 
on by the Board of Inland Revenue, against the unlicensed retailers of methy¬ 
lated spirit. In Bristol, Birmingham, Dewsbury, and other places, informations 
have been lodged and convictions obtained. In Bristol the informer asked 
for “Methylated spirit flavoured with peppermint;” at Dewsbury we find the 
spirit was sold under the name of “ Concentrated Essence of Indian Brandee.” 
The defence urged in the latter cases was, “ That the offence had been committed 
in ignorance of the pernicious nature of the article^ the defendants having been 
given to understand that it was a capital remedy for coughs and other ailments. 
In each case the mitigated penalty of £12. IO 5 . was imposed.'''' 
Sydney Smith once said, that the public would never travel safely on railways 
until a bishop had been killed. We by no means desire to suggest the sacri¬ 
fice of a member of the episcopal bench on the altar of railway directors— 
we doubt its efficacy—and merely mention it because there seems^ in it a 
similarity to the methylated spirit question. The Pharmaceutical Society, 
backed by the higher medical authorities in Pall Mall, has long tried in vain to 
check the use of this vile compound of spirit of wine and naphtha in the pre¬ 
parations of the Pharmacopoeia; a compound admirably fitted for hat varnish 
and French polish, but utterly hateful to the human, and perhaps even the 
