EDITORIAL. 
185 
apothecaries,  making  it  necessary  for  all,  within  a 'given  time,  to  pre- 
sent proofs  of  their  competency  to  practice  medicine,  midwifery  and 
pharmacy.  If  the  proofs  thus  presented  were  deemed  insufficient,  each 
medical  man  and  midwife  should  within  three  days  submit  to  a  medical 
board  of  examiners  nominated  by  the  Board  of  Health,  and  each  drug- 
gist or  apothecary  to  a  board  consisting  of  three  prominent  druggists, 
and  on  refusal  of  any  to  so  submit,  they  should  be  prevented  from  prac- 
ticing within  the  limits  of  Cincinnati  on  penalty  of  fine.  The  questions 
and  answers  were  to  be  in  writing.  Probably  the  Board  found  on  consid- 
eration it  was  assuming  powers  not  delegated,  and  that  they  had  better 
leave  such  legislation  to  the  State  authorities. 
Since  then  a  bill  has  been  brought  before  the  Ohio  legislature  and  has 
been  pending  some  time,  but  Prot.  Maisch  has  received  information  from 
a  member  of  that  body  that  it  had  been  determined  to  postpone  action 
on  the  subject  until  the  American  Pharmaceutical  Association  has  time 
to  perfect  its  proposed  law  in  September,  next,  when  they  will  consider 
its  merits  when  presented.  We  hope  the  Legislature  of  Pennsylvania 
will  adopt  the  same  course. 
To  OUR  Readers. — In  the  January  number  of  this  Journal,  in  comment- 
ing on  the  late  serious  poisoning  case,  we  headed  our  article  "Death  caused 
by  the  ignorance  of  an  apothecary  and  the  bad  writing  of  a  physician." 
At  the  time  of  writing  the  article  our  knowledge  of  the  prescription  for 
Mrs.  Hecht  was  from  published  evidence  and  verbal  statements  ;  these, 
in  connection  with  a  prescription  of  the  same  physician,  received  and 
dispensed  by  us  a  few  days  after  the  sad  event,  in  which  the  second  letter 
of  the  abbreviation  "-Asafcet."  was  made  more  like  a  't'  than  an  's' 
caused  us  to  believe  the  latter  was  his  usual  way  of  writing  the  word,  and 
that  he  had  incurred  a  degree  of  moral  responsibility  thereby.  Since 
then  Dr.  Philip  Deyoung,'the  prescriber  of  the  dose,  called  on  us,  feel- 
ing himself  sorely  aggrieved  by  our  remarks,  and  invited  us  to  go  to  the 
coroner  and  see  the  original  prescription.  This  we  have  since  done,  and, 
contrary  to  our  expectation  found  the  word  decidedly  more  legible  than  in 
the  prescription  received  by  us,  the  *  s  '  being  tolerably  well  marked,  so  as 
to  spell  Asafoet. 
Under  these  circumstances  it  is  due  to  truth  to  correct  our  record, 
and  justice  requires  us  to  modify  the  opinion  expressed  in  our  January 
number  so  far  as  to  say,  after  seeing  the  original  prescription,  that  any 
apothecary  of  ordinary  qualification  should  have  been  able  to  read  it  as 
the  prescriber  intended.  We  regret  having  caused  Dr.  DeYoung  un- 
deserved pain,  his  feelings  already  lacerated  by  the  loss  of  his  sister, 
a  circumstance  lost  sight  of  at  the  time — in  fact  our  comments,  so  far  as 
the  Doctor  was  concerned,  were  a  second  thought,  intended  mainly  to 
show  the  vital  importance  of  care  in  writing  prescriptions,  for  the  sake  of 
the  patient,  as  well  as  the  apothecary,  who  is  constantly  running  grave 
