EDITORIAL. 
379 
same  time  an  Act  for  preventing  criminal  abortion,  which  contains  in 
Section  3d  the  same  clauses,  and  almost  in  the  same  words. 
May  the  laws  enacted  by  those  two  States  not  be  allowed  to  become  dead 
letters  on  the  respective  statute  books,  and  may  all  the  other  States  of  our 
Union  adopt,  without  unnecessary  delay,  similar  stringent  measures  for 
the  protection  of  the  public  and  the  prevention  of  crime !  M, 
Mistakes — Several  mistakes  which  have  been  made  within  a  few  months 
past,  by  apothecaries  in  different  parts  of  the  country,  have  become  public 
through  the  medical  journals.  None  is  as  painful  as  the  one  which 
occurred  about  the  middle  of  May,  in  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.  .  According  to  the 
Brooklyn  Eagle  of  May  17th,  P.  A.  Schwartz,  a  clerk  in  a  store  on  Atlantic 
street,  was  requested  to  copy  the  following  prescription,  which  had  been 
previously  put  up  at  this  store  : 
Quinise  sulph.  ^ss. 
ifxt.  Nuc.  Vom.,  gr.  i. 
M.  ft  pil.  No.  xv. 
Dose  :  one  pill  every  two  hours. 
He  wrote  for  Quin.  Sulph.  gss.,  Ext.  Nuc.  Vom.  gj.,  &c,  and  this  pre- 
scription was  put  up  by  Richard  Somers  at  a  store  in  Montague  St.  The 
patient,  a  lady,  took  one  pill,  and  died  in  the  course  of  a  few  hours.  It  is 
unnecessary  to  make  any  comment  on  such  gross  carelessness  ;  but  is  it 
not  time  that  pharmacists,  as  well  as  the  public  at  large,  should  wake  up 
to  the  necessity  of  requiring  the  strict  education  of  every  dispenser  of 
medicine  ?  The  educated  pharmacist  must  know  that  4  grains  of  ext.  of  nux 
vom.  of  our  pharmacopoeia  is  a  poisonous  dose,  and  that  he  has  no  right  to 
put  it  up  without  previously  consulting  the  prescriber. 
The  victim  is  dead,  and  the  daily  press  has  had  food  for  some  editorials 
on  the  incapability  of  drug  clerks,  without  suggesting  the  only  practical 
remedy  of  such  crying  evils, — namely,  a  sound  professional  education. 
Recently,  after  the  explosion  of  a  steam  boiler  in  this  city,  involving  the 
loss  of  over  thirty  human  beings,  and  in  consequence  of  this  fearful 
slaughter,  much  virtuous  indignation  was  expressed  by  the  newspapers 
regarding  the  employment  of  incompetent  engineers,  and  it  was  urged  that 
a  law  be  passed  by  the  Legislature  forbidding  the  employment  of  any  one 
as  engineer  unless  he  has  passed  a  stringent  examination  before  a  Board 
appointed  for  that  purpose.  We  do  not  wish  to  discuss  the  merits  of  such 
a  proposition,  but  merely  desire  to  ask  whether,  in  city  and  country,  the 
lives  of  thousands  of  persons  are  not,  every  day,  virtually  in  the  hands  of 
ignorant  pretenders,  who,  without  sufficient  education,  assume  te  prescribe 
and  dispense  medicines,  of  the  power  of  which  they  have  merely  some  in- 
distinct idea?  and  is  a  catastrophe  excusable  because,  in  its  very  nature, 
it  cannot  assume  such  gigantic  proportions  as  the  explosion  referred  to 
before  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  wrongs  of  omission  and  commission 
may  be  of  more  frequent  occurrence  ? 
The  agitation  for  medical  reform  is  progressing;  Maryland  has  taken 
