Royal Commission on Secret Drugs Cures and Foods ...

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

(Sydney: William Applegate Gullick August 1907). Thick f'scap folio. Orig. printed boards with cloth spine. (viii 456pp.). With contemp. adverts tables and 1 folding chart. (Parliamentary Papers Royal Commissions Commonwealth of Australia). NOTE: Octavius Beale was a piano manufacturer and philanthropist who served on a 1903 New South Wales commission on infant mortality and who continued to campaign against patent medicines particularly contraceptives and abortifacients. In 1905 Beale secured a commission from Alfred Deakin to undertake at his own expense what has been described as the most personal Royal Commission ever held. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography his report "had to be purged of some of its wilder claims before publication " but in fact it circulated in both its original and amended format. It was originally tabled on 8 August 1907 but after a debate on 11 September it was withdrawn and reviewed by four medically qualified MPs chaired by Charles Carty Salmon. On 20 November they recommended a small number of changes (Parliamentary paper no. 139 of 1907; Vol. 2 page 1337). The printer was instructed to reprint page 9/10 removing three paragraphs and obliterate three lines on page 15. The sections on page 10 were an intemperate attack on the Review of Reviews and Annie Besant (quoted in paragraph 7) and the lines on page 15 concern the use of whalebone or wire to induce abortions. Pages 9 and 10 were further extensively rewritten and pages 9 to 19 were completely reset. Australasian Pharmaceutical Notes & News (January 1931) notes that "copies were recalled as far as possible and ... destroyed." A revised version of the report was tabled on 13 December. Here offered a copy of the original censored report. Rare.