382 
Compounding  and  Dispensing. 
(Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
J     August,  1909. 
authorized,  and  his  responsibility  for  the  acts  of  his  employees  cannot 
be  disputed.  The  contention  that  a  master  is  only  responsible  for 
the  acts  of  his  servants  when  he  might  have  prevented  the  act  and 
did  not,  was  dismissed,  the  Court  saying  there  would  be  no  respon- 
sibility in  the  principal  except  for  such  acts  as  were  done  in  his 
presence. 
In  the  same  way  liability  may  be  incurred  by  improper  labelling. 
In  the  case  of  Thomas  vs.  Winchester,  6  X.  Y.  397,  a  physician  had 
prescribed  a  dose  of  dandelion  for  the  wife  of  the  plaintiff :  the 
article  sold  was  belladonna,  which  was  believed  at  the  time  to  be 
dandelion  and  was  so  labelled.  The  resident  druggist  had  pur- 
chased the  article  as  extract  of  dandelion  from  Aspinwall,  a  drug- 
gist of  Xew  York.  Aspinwall  bought  it  of  the  defendant  as  extract 
of  dandelion,  believing  it  to  be  such.  The  judge  charged  the  jury 
that  if  they  should  find  from  the  evidence  that  either  Aspinwall  or 
the  local  druggist  was  guilty  of  negligence  in  vending,  or  that  the 
plaintiff  or  those  who  administered  it  to  her  were  chargeable  with 
negligence,  the  plaintiff  was  not  entitled  to  recovery,  but  if  they 
were  free  from  negligence  and  if  the  defendant  was  guilty  of  negli- 
gence in  putting  up  and  vending  the  extracts  in  question,  the  plaintiff 
was  entitled  to  recover.  The  defense  that  there  was  no  privity  of 
contract  between  the  plaintiff  and  a  remote  vendor  of  the  medicine, 
the  Court  held  could  not  be  maintained.  It  was  decided  that  in 
labelling  a  poisonous  drug  with  the  name  of  a  harmless  medicine 
for  public  market  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  liability  in  civil  action. 
The  facts  in  one  other  case  may  be  interesting  dealing  with  the 
question  of  contributory  negligence  where  the  plaintiff  went  to  a 
jar  of  belladonna,  took  out  on  the  point  of  his  knife  what  he  thought 
was  a  dose  of  extract  of  dandelion,  and  called  the  attention  of  one 
of  the  defendants  to  it  and  asked  if  it  was  a  proper  dose  and  there- 
upon took  it.  where,  it  appears  the  jar  was  properly  labelled.  The 
question  of  the  plaintiff's  contributory  negligence  was  raised  and 
considered  sufficient  to  defeat  his  contention  that  the  defendant 
was  guilty  of  negligence  in  not  discovering  the  plaintiff's  danger, 
although  the  plaintiff  had  consulted  him  with  regard  to  the  size 
of  the  dose.  One  of  the  judges  filed  a  dissenting  opinion  to  the 
effect  that  if  the  defendant  had  seen  or  was  aware  of  the  plaintiff's 
danger  and  failed  to  exercise  ordinary  care  to  prevent  it.  he  would 
be  liable. 
Gibson  vs.  Torbert.  115  Iowa  163,  is  authority  for  the  rule  that 
no  liability  attaches  to  a  druggist  for  injuries  to  a  customer  for 
