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South Canterbury Times, Issue 2128, 17 January 1880, Page 2

It is high time that steps were taken to restrict the indiscriminate sale of deadly poisons like chlorodync. We have very recently had an instance of the ease with which any person may’ obtain the drug by which the unfortunate man Willis lost his life. There is a great deal of truth in the remark that fell from the Coroner on Thursday last. “People suppose because chlorodyme and such deadly agents are common and may be had anywhere,” said his Worship, “ that therefore their properties must be common too.” Every precaution is taken by the chemist when iie is applied to for arsenic or prussic acid, and it would be a very difficult matter for any person to obtain these things even for the most legitimate purpose ; but chlorodync—and we have Dr Hogg’s own testimony to the fact that the bottle purchased by Willis contained sufficient poison to kill, not one, but half-a-dozen people—may be obtained at every store and chemist’s shop in the country. Surely, we repeat, this is a matter that should be looked into. It is undesirable that people entirely ignorant of drugs and chemicals, and their effects on the human system, should have it in their power to obtain anywhere and at any time, if not prussic acid or strychnine, at least that which for all practical purposes is every bit as deadly'.