section 5. This Act shall not extend to the sale of arsenic when the same forms part of the ingredients of any medicine required to be made up or compounded, according to the prescription of a legally qualified practitioner or a member of the medical profession, or to the sale of arsenic by wholesale dealers or exports from Great Britain. 3. Revised Statutes, State of New York, Chapter 442, section 1. An Act to Regulate the Sale of Poisons. "No person shall sell, give or dispose of any poison or poisonous substance except upon the order or prescription of a regularly authorized practicing physician, etc., without attaching to the vial or parcel a label with the name and residence of purchaser and the word poison, in red ink, the same to be recorded in a book kept for the purpose. Fine not exceeding $50.❞ 4. Public Statutes of Massachusetts require a register to be kept of sales, and imposes a fine to the same amount for violation of same, and for purchasers giving fictitious names in obtaining poisons, among which opium is not mentioned. 5. Revised Statutes of Ohio. Similar enactment. 6. Connecticut. No law regulating sale of poisons. 8. Maryland. Also without such law. South Carolina Enactment similar to that of New York. Dr. Frazer, Secretary of the State Board of Health, informed your chairman whilst at Charleston, that the law was really more than adequate, as his city was not given to opium eating. In Georgia, same enactment; but there is a greater consumption of narcotics by the laity there, and the law is a dead letter. Florida. No law of any kind upon the subject. Louisiana has a law similar to that of New York. Dr. Chaillé, Chairman of the Committee on Legal Medicine of the State Board of Health, with whom your Chairman had an interview on the subject at New Orleans, believed that much good is accomplished by an adequate law, although frequently evaded as it is both in this country and Europe. It will be seen, therefore, that the American laws place but little restriction upon the sale of potent drugs, and although the English law comes nearer to what is to be desired, it would nevertheless, if a similar law were adopted here, endorse and permit the very point NOTE.-The English law allows apothecaries to sell opium or any poison to their patients within their own discretion. The strict legal requirements to which apothecaries in England must conform, have been already alluded to. for which we are contending, namely: that druggists or apothecaries be not allowed to sell any of the poisons herein named, and others not named, to their patients, except upon prescription by a regular practicing physician. A law, then, to meet the requirements of the case would, in our judgment, be such a one as to embody the first part of the English law, omitting the clause relative to apothecaries being allowed to sell without the prescription of a regular practicing physician. Such a law would not be intended to affect in any way the wholesale drug business, exports or imports of large quantities.* We would suggest the following: It shall be unlawful to sell, give or dispose of any poison or poisonous substance except upon the order or prescription of a regularly authorized practicing physician, under penalty of a fine not exceeding $25 for the first offense, nor $50 for each succeeding offence. This Act shall not extend to the sale of poisons or poisonous substances by wholesale dealers. It will be observed that the question of municipal legislation through the City Council of Baltimore, to restrict the sale of potent drugs, is disposed of by the action it is now proposed to take in regard to the Legislature of Maryland. In case of failure to get passed a law regulating such sales throughout the State, it would be in order to bring the matter to the attention of the City Fathers, and have, if possible, proper laws restricting the sale of potent drugs in the city of Baltimore. Permit me, on behalf of the Committee, Mr. President and gentlemen of the Faculty, to thank you for your attention and support in this matter of so grave import to the public and to us, as physicians and guardians of the public health, and to present herewith the report of the Committee on Potent Drugs. Respectfully submitted, G. HALSTED BOYLAND, M.D., Chairman. Committee. *By omitting altogether the clause relative to retail druggists or apothecaries, any pos sible evasion of the law would be guarded against. f REPORT OF THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE APPOINTED In accordance with a resolution adopted at the last annual convention of this Faculty, the undersigned were appointed members of a committee "to take into consideration and report at the next annual convention of the Faculty what, if any, specific action can be taken upon the recommendations made in the president's address, bearing upon the relations of the medical profession to certain sanitary needs of the community." The committee has carefully considered the important points in the address of ex-president McSherry, referred to in the resolution quoted, and begs leave to submit the following report: The committee is of the opinion that this Faculty should take such measures as will tend to secure to the medical profession of the State its proper share of responsibility and influence in determining sanitary legislation, and securing representative and respectable appointments to positions in the medical services of the city and commonwealth. Further, that the Faculty should bring to the attention of the City Council of Baltimore and the General Assembly of Maryland such recommendations as would tend to raise the professional standard, to improve the sanitary condition of the commonwealth, to render more efficient the labors of State and local boards of health, and to secure to the physician, when called to testify in court to matters of fact or opinion, those privileges to which his professional standing entitles him. Your committee is further of the opinion that this Faculty should especially urge upon the Governor and the General Assembly the great importance of a sanitary survey of the State, to be carried out under the direction of the State Board of Health. Such a survey would be of incalculable value to the people of this State; it would demonstrate the nature and locality of grave sanitary defects, and would indicate the proper measures necessary to correct such defects. Further, the Faculty should urge upon the proper authorities the vital necessity of securing to each inhabitant of the State a pure water supply, by preventing the pollution of streams used as sources of supply, and by presenting to everyone evidence of the danger to health lurking in impure drinking water Further, the Faculty should call attention to the extent to which food and medicines are adulterated, and urge measures providing for the detection of such adulteration and the punishment of persons engaged in the sophistication of those necessary factors of health and happiness. Attention should also be directed to the dangers of diseased and otherwise unwholesome meat or other articles of food, and the importance of legal enactments to prevent the sale of such unwholesome provisions. The Faculty should further represent to the State and local governments the right of the medical profession to be consulted in the composition of boards of health and boards of management of prisons, insane asylums and public hospitals. Further, that to secure to as great an extent as possible the health and vigor of the rising generation, the Faculty should recommend the appointment of medical inspectors of schools, who should have the privilege of taking part in the deliberations of school boards. Further, the Faculty should demand from the State a careful guardianship over the health of those employed in workshops, factories and other industries in which life and health are endangered by avoidable causes. Finally, the Committee is of opinion that the Faculty should ask of the General Assembly, on the part of the medical profession of the State, a thoroughgoing investigation of the extent of the social evil, its lamentable consequences both moral and physical, and the proper measures to be adopted for the restriction of this evil and its results. The Committee is of opinion that the intention of the Faculty can be best carried out, if the recommendations in this report be adopted, by the appointment of a special committee on Public Hygiene, which shall be the medium of this Faculty in its intercourse with the public or its legal representatives. The Committee would suggest that the special Committee herein recommended be granted power to take preliminary action on the questions that may come before it, but that in no case shall it have final power to act until its conclusions have been approved by the Faculty at a special meeting called by the President. GEORGE H. ROHÉ, PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS, ON THE ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF CHOLERA. By THOMAS S. LATIMER, M.D. Gentlemen of the Faculty: I am happy to state that the Eighty-seventh Annual Convention of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland finds it prosperous and active, on the threshold, I believe, of a new career of usefulness determined by the improved knowledge, increased energy and more active rivalry of the time. I have also to thank you very cordially for the distinction conferred on me in making me your president. It is an honor more deeply felt than I shall attempt to express. The history of the past year will be furnished you by the different committees having control of the several departments of the Faculty. I have, therefore, thought it best to limit my remarks to one subject: THE ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF CHOLERA. That cholera is indigenous to Asia and to Asia only there is but little reason to doubt, notwithstanding the fact that, when pandemic, cases have occurred in extra-Indian countries, not traced directly or indirectly to Asia, and that cases have occurred sporadically and epidemically at the most various points of the globe. The Greek and Roman physicians, from the time of Hippocrates, had, it is said, seen and described cholera, and all the Arabian and Arabistic writers had mentioned it long before 1817. But an examination of these claims clearly shows that they rest on an erroneous diagnosis between two forms of disease which closely resemble each other, but are essentially different in mode of origin and in their clinical history. |