Am.  Jour.  Pbaixti.  t 
August,  1910.  J 
Michael  Carteighe. 
393 
Act  of  1868  were  defined  as  medicines  being  the  subject  of  Letters 
Patent  in  force.  In  the  Piper  case,  as  already  mentioned,  it  was 
decided  by  the  High  Court  in  1893  that  proprietary  medicines  con- 
taining poison  are  not  within  the  exemption  of  Section  16  relating 
to  patent  medicines.  The  Society  found,  however,  that  grants  of 
Letters  Patent  for  medicines  containing  poisons  had  been  applied 
for  with  the  object  of  evading  the  provisions  of  the  Pharmacy 
Act,  and  although  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  had  not  the  power  to 
oppose  the  granting  of  such  patents,  Mr.  Carteighe  and  the  Council 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  its  duty  to  procure  the  revocation 
of  such  Letters  Patent.  The  first  case  undertaken  was  in  reference 
to  a  patent  "  for  an  improvement  in  cough  mixtures,"  the  patentee 
claiming  "  a  preparation  of  hedge  hyssop  in  conjunction  with  one  or 
more  ingredients  therein  described."  Among  the  ingredients  were 
morphine  and  chloroform,  and  on  the  Society's  application  an  order 
for  revocation  was  made.  This  case  was  followed  by  others,  the  So- 
ciety almost  invariably  meeting  with  success  in  the  campaign  it  had 
undertaken.  This  is  a  feature  of  Mr.  Carteighe's  period  of  office 
which  most  people  may  have  forgotten,  and  is  recalled  to  show  how 
he  endeavored  in  every  possible  way  to  perform  the  duties  which  he 
felt  the  Society  owed  to  the  public. 
In  The  Pharmaceutical  Journal  Michael  Carteighe  took  a  very 
deep  and  constant  interest.  He  was  a  frequent  contributor  to  its 
pages  during  the  period  when  the  Journal  was  under  the  control  of 
an  Editorial  Committee,  and  innumerable  unsigned  articles  from  his 
pen  have  appeared  in  these  columns.  It  is  interesting  to  note,  by 
the  way,  that  his  first  communication  to  the  Journal  was  in  1862, 
when  he  directed  attention  to  the  fact  that  a  weekly  subscription  had 
been  commenced  by  the  Associates  and  Students  attending  the  lec- 
tures of  the  Society  for  the  benefit  of  the  Lancashire  operatives  who 
were  suffering  so  severely  from  the  failure  of  the  cotton  supply,  and 
asking  for  subscriptions.  The  Pharmaceutical  Journal  was  riot  the 
only  publication  of  the  Society  in  which  he  took  a  profound  interest. 
His  share  in  the  production  of  the  British  Pharmaceutical  Codex 
will  probably  be  regarded,  in  the  years  to  come,  as  being  not  the  least 
important  work  of  the  strenuous  life  which  he  so  largely  devoted  to 
the  service  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  and  its  School,  for  the 
good  of  pharmacy  in  general.  Though  the  idea  of  the  production 
by  the  Society  of  an  authoritative  formulary  appears  to  have  sug- 
