Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/75

 the contents of the stomach to dryness, made an alcoholic extract from the residue, and giving this to several dogs, chickens, and frogs, found that they were all made lethargic by it, some of them oftener than once, and that a few died comatose. Facts such as these, agreeing so pointedly with the known effects of the poison suspected, appear to me to yield evidence almost unimpeachable.

3. The effects of the flesh of poisoned animals, eaten by other animals, constitute the least conclusive of all the varieties of the present branch of evidence. For the flesh of animals that have died of poisoning is not always deleterious; while on the other hand flesh is sometimes rendered so by natural causes, as will be seen in the Chapter on Diseased and Decayed Animal Matter.

This subject stands much in need of careful and methodic investigation. And it is of more practical importance than might be imagined at first sight. For the question has actually occurred in a legal inquiry in this country,—Whether poisoning in the human subject may be caused by the flesh of a poisoned animal?

In regard to some poisons it is well established, that animals killed by them may be eaten with impunity, such as game killed with the wourali poison, or fish by cocculis-indicus. This seems the general rule. But it is not clear that all poisons are similarly circumstanced.

The only systematic researches hitherto undertaken on this question are some recently made at Lucca by Professor Gianelli; of which however I have only seen an abstract. He found that the blood, urine, and lungs of animals poisoned with arsenic acted as a poison on small birds, such as sparrows, whether the parts were taken from the body while the animal was alive, or after death; but that alcohol, cherry-laurel water, corrosive sublimate, sulphate of copper, tartar-emetic, acetate of lead, nitrate of silver, tris-nitrate of bismuth, chloride of tin, sulphate of zinc, laudanum, acetate of morphia, strychnia, and cantharides, had no such effect. Orfila has since shown some reason for doubting the conclusiveness of Gianelli's investigations; and on repeating them, obtained such results as render it doubtful whether any reliance can be put upon experiments made upon small birds. Guérard however has ascertained, that dogs, fed on the flesh and entrails of sheep which had taken arsenic, were attacked with vomiting and purging, became reduced in flesh, and at length would not eat what was put before them; but none of them perished, or seem to have been seriously ill. Arsenic was detected in their urine.

The importance of the inquiry, which the preceding experiments are intended to elucidate, will appear from the following singular case, for the particulars of which I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Jamieson of Aberdeen, who was employed by the authorities to inves-*