248 
Jottings  from  a  Note  Book. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
May,  1888. 
give  glycerin  my  unqualified  approval,  for  I  have  used  and  am  using 
any  amount  for  this  purpose,  and  I  always  find  it  all  that  can  be 
desired.  Of  course,  I  do  not  suggest  the  addition  of  glycerin  where 
the  practitioner  has  not  prescribed  it,  for  I  would  dispense  his  mixture 
as  written. 
Laburnum  Poisoning. — It  may  be  interesting  to  chronicle  a  case  I 
met  with  last  autumn  while  making  some  house-to-house  calls  in  one 
of  the  poorer  localities  of  Oxford.  Two  or  three  children  were  lying 
about  the  room  sick  with  headaches,  pains  in  the  stomach,  and  drowsi- 
ness. The  mother  had  elicited  from  the  elder  that  they  had  eaten 
some  seeds  which  they  had  picked  up  in  a  neighbor's  garden.  I  asked 
to  see  some  of  the  seeds,  and  a  withered  branch  of  what  I  at  once 
knew  to  be  laburnum  was  brought  to  me,  with  plenty  of  fruit  upon  it. 
As  fiir  as  could  be  made  out  from  the  tales  of  the  children,  they  had 
swallowed  some  five  or  six  seeds  each.  The  mother  had  had  the  good 
sense  to  encourage  the  sickness  with  mustard,  and  afterwards  gave 
strong  stimulants  in  the  shape  of  tea  and  coffee,  and  in  two  or  three 
days  the  children  were  well  again.  I  only  mention  this  hoping  that 
by  it  the  poisonous  property  of  that  common  ornamental  shrub  may 
be  the  more  widely  spread,  and  thus  parents  be  put  upon  their  guard. 
In  this  instance  the  woman  had  not  the  slightest  previous  knowledge 
that  laburnum  was  poison. 
Chloroform  as  a  Preservative. — Anyone  wlio  has  to  get  through  a 
large  amount  of  dispensing  in  a  short  time  has  his  ingenuity  put  to 
work  to  devise  every  means  he  can  to  expedite  his  work.  One  of  the 
first  and  most  natural  ideas  is  to  keep  every  drug  or  chemical  (which 
is  likely  to  be  required)  in  solution.  I  now  keep  large  numbers  of 
dispensing  solutions,  in  fact  many  more  than  ever  I  previously  did. 
Then  crops  up  the  difficulty  that  many  soon  spoil,  ferment,  develop 
fungoid  growths,  etc.,  etc.  Where  such  is  the  case  I  use  chloroform 
water,  B.P.,  for  the  solvent  and  in  not  a  single  instance  have  I  found 
it  fail  to  keep  the  solution  perfectly.  I  may  note  in  passing  that  I 
have  the  permission  of  the  medical  staff  to  use  any  such  device  as  this, 
for  the  dose  of  chloroform  introduced  into  a  mixture  by  adding  e.g., 
80  minims  of  a  1  in  10  solution  of  quinine  is  neither  here  nor  there. 
I  have  by  me  quantities  of  pulv.  rhei  rubbed  down  with  aq.  chlorof., 
likewise  pulv.  cret.  aromat.,  solutions  of  quinine,  fer.  am.  cit.,  pot.  acet., 
pot.  citr.,  and  a  host  of  others,  some  of  which  are  some  months  old,  and 
are  as  good  as  the  day  they  were  made.    A  couple  of  drachms  of  chloro- 
