Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/80

 The two particles were produced by him on the trial; and from experiments made in court the late Dr. Cleghorn was enabled to declare, that the meal from the bowl contained arsenic, and that the meal from the barrel did not. These facts, besides proving that the woman had next to a certainty taken arsenic in the porridge, likewise, in conjunction with other slight moral circumstances, established that the poison had been mixed with the meal in the house, and on the morning when the deceased took ill, before any stranger entered the house. The procedure of this farmer was precisely that which ought to be followed by the medical practitioner in a similar conjuncture.

Au instance of an opposite description related by M. Barruel also deserves notice, as showing how evidence of this kind may afford, in otherwise suspicious circumstances, a strong presumption of accidental poisoning. Sixteen people near Bressières in France having been severely affected with vomiting and colic immediately after dinner, the bread, which was suspected, was examined by Barruel, and found to contain a little arsenic. The flour of which the bread was made had been taken from a large store of it, which, on being examined, was also found to be similarly impregnated. As it was extremely improbable that any one either could or would poison so large a mass of flour, to attain any malicious object, it was inferred that the arsenic had been mixed with it accidentally, and that the accident might have arisen from grain having been taken by mistake to the flour-mill to be ground, which had been intended originally for seed, and sprinkled with arsenic to destroy insects.

It may be worth while observing, in the present place, that in the instance of poisoned wine very important evidence may be obtained by examining whether the wine with which the cork is impregnated contains any traces of the poison. This method of investigation occurred to me in a very singular case of poisoning with arsenic in champaign, which happened in a baronet's family in Scotland. In this instance, however, such analysis was proved to be unnecessary; for the gentleman himself brought the bottle from his cellar, broke the wires and drew the cork, immediately before the wine was drunk.

All evidence of the like nature, though it is at present often procured from other sources, should, for obvious reasons, be invariably collected, if possible, with the aid of a medical person. If again a medical man is called to a patient evidently affected with suspicious symptoms, and finds himself obliged to declare such to be his opinion, his thoughts, as soon as he has given directions for the treatment, should be turned towards that part of the evidence, for the securing of which he is naturally looked to as the person best qualified by previous education and his opportunities at the mo-*