The Poisons of the Pharmacy Act

Abstract

ONE of the minor legislative achievements of last session was an amendment of the Poisons and Pharmacy Acts. So far as poisons are concerned, it may be noted that these Acts restrict the facilities for obtaining certain substances which experience has shown to be often responsible for fatalities, whether by accident or by intentional administration. Besides the commoner violent poisons—the arsenic and strychnine of the wilful poisoner, the prussic acid and carbolic acid of the suicide—there are milder varieties of toxic substances which may lead to fatal results through ignorant or careless usage, and which should therefore not lightly be dealt out to ignorant or careless users. Such, for instance, are the narcotics, as morphine and sulphonal; the emetics, e.g. tartar emetic; and the abortifacients, such as ergot and savin.