On the Growth of Plants in Various Gases, Especially substituting Carbonic Oxide, Hydrogen, and light Carburetted Hydrogen for the Nitrogen of the Air.
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EDITORIAL.
“AN ACT RELATING TO THE SALE OF DRUGS AND MEDICINES.”
“The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
SECTION 1st. It shall not be lawful for any Physician, Druggist, Apothecary, or any person or persons dealing in Drugs or Medicines, or engaged in preparing any compound to be given or administered as a medicine, to offer the same for sale without first affixing or attaching thereto, in a conspicuous manner, a written or printed recipe in the English language, stating the drug or drugs, medicine or medicines, or ingredients of which it is composed, together with the proportions of each.
SECTION 2. Any person or persons violating the preceding section of this Act, shall be considered guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be fined for each offence in a sum not less than ten dollars, nor exceeding one hundred dollars, or be imprisoned for a term not exceeding six months.
SECTION 3. This Act shall not take effect until the first day of July, 1852.
Albany, February 6th, 1852.”
On reading this bill, carelessly, we thought that it was intended to be levelled at nostroms and quack medicines. If it were so, however laudable the motives of its originators, its policy is much to be doubted. The public are not prepared for it; it would, at once, raise a clamour about selfish motives and private interests; it would never be enforced: and would tend to bring more moderate and judicious legislation into contempt. But a careful perusal of the bill shows that it applies to Apothecaries and venders of medicines in the ordinary prosecution of their business. Should it become a law, no Apothecary could sell six cents worth of paregoric, or an ounce of spiced syrup of rhubarb, unless he accompanies the article sold with a detailed enumeration of the substances composing it, with the proportions of each “written or printed in the English language,” without rendering himself liable to fine and imprisonment! It is not necessary to characterize such a law to Druggists. It is worthy of notice, however, as an instance of that spirit of pseudo reform which is at present so rampant. As a general rule, we believe, Physicians have no objection to their patients knowing the remedies they prescribe, particularly when the patients themselves are people of sense and information, but in many instances, of what use would it be to the sick man and his conclave of friends to be able to spell {63} out the ingredients of a prescription? Would it help them to a knowledge of its effects? Are they the best judges of its propriety? And if so, had not the law better proscribe educated Physicians altogether?
And then “written or printed in the English language”! The framers of such a law could not be expected to recognize a National or any other Pharmacopœia; which of the twenty trivial names, that in different times and different places have been bestowed upon the same article, should we choose? Should we follow strictly the modern chemical nomenclature, or should we take that of a few years back or should we go to the fountain head and return to the names of the old Alchemists? The whole matter is unworthy serious comment.