AmASu?t,Pi9o£m"}     Pharmacy  Laws  and  Legislation.  407 
plaintiff.  The  line  of  the  defendant's  argument  was  that  he  had 
exercised  due  care  and  caution  in  employing  a  graduate  pharmacist 
and  therefore  was  not  responsible,  citing  in  defense  of  this  position 
that  railways  were  not  responsible  for  damages  resulting  from  the 
negligence  of  their  surgeons,  nor  banks  for  the  mistakes  of  their 
notaries.  The  court  denied  the  validity  of  this  argument,  holding 
that  as  the  practice  of  surgery  was  not  the  province  of  a  railway 
company,  nor  notarial  services  the  business  of  a  bank,  these  had 
exercised  due  care  and  skill  when  they  had  selected  properly  quali- 
fied surgeons  and  notaries,  but  that  the  filling  of  prescriptions 
being  the  special  province  of  a  pharmacist,  the  latter  could  not 
escape  liability  by  delegating  his  own  proper  function  to  another 
person. 
In  the  case  against  Maurer,  of  Philadelphia,  for  the  sale  of 
Canadian  phenacetine  in  the  United  States,  the  United  States  Cir- 
cuit Court,  for  the  Eastern  District  of  Pennsylvania,  has  handed 
down  a  decision  affirming  in  general  terms  the  validity  of  the  Hins- 
berger  patent.  As  this  was  generally  regarded  as  a  test  case,  the 
decision  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  settling  the  right  of  the  patentee 
and  his  assigns  to  the  exclusive  right  to  sell  phenacetine  within 
the  territories  of  the  United  States. 
A  temporary  injunction  has  been  obtained  by  Ralph  P.  Hoag- 
land,  a  cutting  druggist  of  Boston,  in  his  suit  against  the  Eastern 
Drug  Company  and  others,  to  restrain  them  from  interfering  with 
the  plaintiff's  business.  The  allegations  of  the  plaintiff's  bill  set 
out  that  the  defendants  have  interfered  with  his  buying  and  selling 
of  drugs  because  he  has  refused  to  join  the  defendants'  association 
which  seeks  to  maintain  prices,  etc. 
A  recent  decision  of  the  Massachusetts  Supreme  Court  holds 
that  a  person  who  pleads  guilty  of  the  illegal  sale  of  intoxicating 
liquors  has  been  "  convicted  "  within  the  meaning  of  the  law  which 
authorizes  the  Board  of  Pharmacy  to  revoke  the  registration  certifi- 
cate of  a  druggist  "  convicted  (for  such  offense)  before  a  court  of 
competent  jurisdiction." 
Two  recent  Cincinnati  decisions  regarding  the  sale  of  poisons, 
are  of  interest  to  pharmacists. 
In  one  case  the  defendant  druggist  sold  arsenic  to  a  servant,  a 
