BOY POISONED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 717, 18 December 1933, Page 3

BOY POISONED

HOSPITAL METHODS CRITICISED |Dr. A. Amibrose, an English coroner, recently strongly criticised the manner in which dangerous drugs were handled at Whippscross Hospital, Leyton. 'He was holding an inquest on Peter Frederick Butcher, the two-months-old child of a ship's scaler, of Canning Town. Dr. P. Baron said he preseribed oue minim of l-in-(1000 acrophine, in water. Later the child became ill from atropine poisoning, and died. He gathered that it had ibeen given I medicine from the wrong bottle, which was 60 times too stronig. In his opinion death was due to gastroenteritis, and not to atropine poisoning. Dr. Ambrose, having recorded a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence, said to Dr. Orm Kelly, medioal .superintendent of the hospital: "It seems very unsatisfactory. In ■the first place this bottle contained a atrong solution of atropine, and instead of being locked up it was left in a place where any probationer could get it. "The next point is that the order of the doctor to give the child one iminirn dose of atropine one-in-a-thousiand was itranslated in the hook — (which is no good if not accurate — into a dose of a drachm, which is 60 times as much. It is very unsatisfac- ■ tory that strong drugs should be laandled in this loose and careless fashion. It does not reflect credit. '"Then the two ibottles which I believe were concerned were sent down and washed, so that -the labels were taken off, and there is no opportunity of seeing what was on: them. That was a most wrong thimg; to do."