Page:Introductory lecture on medical jurisprudence - delivered in the theatre of the Royal Dublin Society, on Saturday, the 16th November, 1839 (IA b21916512).pdf/16

14 sublimate. The prisoner, in his defence, alleged that he had mistaken for the water bottle an injection of corrosive sublimate he had prepared for a sailor. But by chemical analysis, it was ascertained that the injection contained five grams of corrosive sublimate to an ounce of water, while the draught for the wife contained fourteen grains.

In the last case which I intend to cite, medical knowledge was equally successful, in a somewhat similar way, in defeating a conspiracy to impute the crime of poisoning. A man of the name of Whally was tried at the assizes of York for administering arsenic to a woman who was pregnant by him. She swore that the prisoner, after twice trying to prevail on her to take drugs, for the purpose of procuring abortion, sent her a present of tarts, of which she ate one and a half, and in half an hour after was seized with symptoms of poisoning. Mr. Thackrah, an intelligent surgeon at Leeds, who was called to see her, found arsenic in the tarts that remained, and also in the matters vomited at different times; but he remarked, that her appearance did not correspond with the complaints she made of suffering; her pulse and tongue were natural, and on careful investigation, the following inconsistencies appeared:

1. She said she felt a coppery taste on eating the tart, a taste which arsenic certainly has not.

2. From the quantity of arsenic in the tarts that remained, she could not have taken above ten grains, while after repeated vomiting, the last matter vomited contained fifteen grains.

3. The time at which these fifteen grains were alleged to have been vomited, was not till two or three hours after the symptoms began; in which case, the symptoms would have been violent before that time.

The prisoner was acquitted, and the prosecutor and another woman, who had corroborated her testimony, subsequently confessed they had agreed to impute the crime to him, because he had deserted her.

But while the utility and importance of this kind of