The day, indeed, may not be very distant
when a senior wrangler shall set up in practice,
and become the Brodie or the Brougham
of his brotherhood.

We can dwell on this topic only in as far
as it relates to the detection of poisoning,
and the abatement of it. For this we depend
wholly upon men by whom natural science
and philosophy have been carefully studied.
For the detection and reduction or suppression
of the poison in the air of towns, in
food, in dwellings, or arising out of the old
unhealthy practices that have not been
discarded yet from the routine of trade, we need
the services of such a board of men as we are
already beginning here and there to employ,
in the shape of Oflicers of Health. These
should be men not simply qualified to write
after their names M.R.C.S. and L.S.A., but
persons who have maintained a continuous
attention to the mysteries of nature, and
have shown that they possess a spirit of
inquiry and the necessary patience in
research. Here, then, is another field of labour
for society—another great profession—into
which the steady course of civilisation is now
leading us to see that men of science must
be called.

Not long ago, a sick person dealing
with a herbalist, died suddenly. A very
harmless herb only had been asked for, but
suspicion arose that a very deadly herb was
the one given. To try the matter, the same
herb was again asked for, and, from an
unsorted heap, the old woman by whom the
herb-shop was kept, delivered a parcel
of belladonna, than which no plant growing
in this country yields more deadly poison.
How many more than the one known death
had this misplaced heap of belladonna caused?
If it be due to the liberty of the subject that
as any quack may sell any amount of drastic
medicine to be swallowed in pills blindly,
without check or counsel, so any crone may
retail to the public death-dealing herbs; yet
at least let there be some little oversight
applied—let there be some little of the light
of knowledge cast over the dark corners of
civilisation. No one can sell without a
licence pepper, snuff, and tobacco; any one
may sell to the ignorant poor, dried herbs
with which to kill or cure themselves. If
herbalists were not allowed to trade without
a licence and a registration of their shops,
and if herbalists' shops were submitted to the
inspection of a person in each district, having
a competent knowledge of medical botany,
the keepers of them (who can have no wish
to destroy life) might be guided and
restrained from mischief without any undue
infringement of their liberty.

Then, again, as regards hurtful adulterations;
there will be an end of them when
systematic use is made of scientific
knowledge. To sell an article for what it is not,
is a fraud—a lie; and it is indisputable that
the suppression of all secret and
intentional adulteration would be not merely a
great gain to society, but a great gain to the
interests of trade. To detect and punish such
adulteration is as much a duty to just-
minded tradesmen as to those who buy of
them; and to suppress at least poisonous
adulteration, if it be possible to be done, is
a distinct obligation on the state, of which to
protect life is by no means the least important
function. A permanent committee of
five or six persons, who possess the best attainable
knowledge of chemistry, botany, and
natural history, aided by a simple machinery
of inspection, and subordinated, perhaps,
to the General Board of Health, might not
only keep down all practices of deleterious
adulteration, but might even supply particular
trades with a great many of those points
of scientific information which they have riot
yet turned to the right account. Thus, Dr.
Taylor, in his recent evidence before a
committee of the House of Commons, pointed out,
that while risks are run daily, and many lives
lost yearly, by the prussic acid that exists
often in large quantities in the almond flavour
used by cooks and confectioners, and bought
by housekeepers without a syllable of warning
as to poison, there is no need at all
of either giving up the flavour, or of risking
life for love of it. " The prussic acid," he
said, " may be separated from the oil, which
is then free from danger. The flavour and
odour are chiefly owing to the oil, quite
independent of the acid; and there is no excuse
for the use of it, except laziness and
ignorance." Let then, trade and science come
into relation with each other by help of a
well-devised committee, competent not only
to check dishonest practices, but to assist
honest endeavours. We would suggest that
it might be authorised to call juries of able
men engaged in any branch of trade, to whom
they should propose sanitary or other
improvements in the ordinary practice of their
calling, and by whom they might be
instructed concerning any practical difficulties
to be overcome, before publishing, endorsed
by its own jury—such suggestions to the
trade they were designed to benefit.

Every medical man knows well the grave
need that exists for a strict supervision of
the quality of certain drugs kept in the
chemists' shops. An able physician may with
a prescription faultless in itself damage to a
very serious extent his patient's health,
through ignorance of a defect that ought
not to exist in the drugs used. To take an
obvious example; there is diversity over a
wide range at chemists' shops in respect to
the strength of laudanum. The physician
knows only the rule, that in so many drops of
laudanum one grain of opium shall be
contained, and he prescribes accordingly. Yet
the unlucky patient may get of this powerful
drug a proper dose, a half-dose, or a double
dose. Taking all chemists' shops into
consideration, it may even be said, that he