Poison Tablets

A friend of the head pharmacist of the U. S. had a sore foot. He bought some bichloride of mercury tablets for an antiseptic footwash. Several days later he took several "Aspirin" tablets, died poisoned by the deadly bichloride. Therefore last week U. S. manufacturing druggists and editors of pharmaceutical journals had on their desks copies of a sharp letter from Dr. Ernest Fullerton Cook, chairman of the revision committee of the U. S. Pharmacopoeia and the dead man's friend. Dr. Cook's letter reminded every one that it was just to prevent such accidents that the Pharmacopoeia 16 years ago laid down strict rules for the preparation of bichloride tablets. Bichloride of mercury (corrosive mercuric chloride, corrosive sublimate), deadly poison,* is used to preserve wood and museum specimens, to kill germs, insects, rodents and other animals. It is also used for embalming, tanning, printing textiles, dyeing furs, purifying gold, etching metals. As an antiseptic it is useful but dangerous. Hence the Pharmacopoeia commands that tablets of bichloride of mercury intended for antiseptic use be "of an angular shape, not discoid [shape of many medicinal tablets], each having the word 'POISON' and the skull & crossbones design distinctly stamped upon it. . . . The tablets are to be colored blue . . . are to be dispensed in securely stoppered glass containers on the exterior of which is placed a red label bearing the word 'POISON'. . . ." No other drug in the entire Pharmacopoeia need be colored or shaped so distinctively.

*A poison is any substance which, when taken into the body in a single dose of 15 grains or less, is injurious to health or dangerous to life. Legal definition in New York State is a drug which produces death in doses of 60 grains or less. A bichloride tablet should not contain more than 8 grains of the poison.

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