In England in 1857 a Bill was introduced into Parliament to regulate the sale of poisons. One of the clauses in this proposed Bill ordered that:

“... all medicines containing any poison should be supplied in quadrangular blue glass bottles, labelled in conspicuous capitals, white on black ground, POISON, the word POISON being also embossed in raised letters on the four sides of the bottle”.¹

The design was clearly the result of analysis and thought applied to the problem of reducing what we now call “medication errors”. It is well human engineered:

1. The black ground of the printed word POISON serves by its blackness as a warning. …