Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/88

 vomiting and purging. One of the ladies was similarly affected, but in a less degree; and likewise the other gentleman, though in a degree still less: but the other lady did not suffer at all. Morgagni found, that this lady was the only one of the party who had not tasted a dish of soup at the commencement of dinner. But he was puzzled on finding that the gentleman who suffered least had taken the largest share of the soup, while the clergyman had taken less than either of the two that were seized along with him. He then remembered, however, that in the district where the accident happened, it was the custom to use scraped cheese with the soup in question; and on inquiry he was informed that they had each added to the soup a quantity of cheese proportioned to the severity of their illness. Here, therefore, Morgagni was led to suspect the presence of poison; and accordingly, after the whole party had fortunately recovered, the innkeeper acknowledged, that in the hurry of preparation, he had served up to his guests cheese seasoned with arsenic to poison rats. This interesting anecdote shows, that the truth in such cases is not always to be discovered without minute inquiry and considerable adroitness. In the case of poisoning with arsenic in wine formerly alluded to,—where all the individuals at table, to the amount of six, were severely affected during dinner,—the soup was the article suspected, because all had partaken of it; and, accordingly, the soup and vomited matter were sent to me for analysis. On detecting a trace of arsenic in the vomited matter, but none in the soup, I suggested that some other article might have been used in common by the party, and mentioned the wine as a probable article of the kind. It turned out that all had drunk a single glass of champaign from a particular bottle; and in the wine remaining in this bottle arsenic was found in the proportion of half a grain per ounce.

Cases of this nature are so instructive that no apology need be made for mentioning one example more which lately came under my own notice. In the case of Mary Anne Alcorn, convicted here in the summer of 1827, of having administered poison to her master and mistress (a case already referred to for another purpose, p. 75), it was proved that a white powder was introduced in a suspicious manner into the gravy of baked beef, which gravy was subsequently poured over the beef. Now the master of the family dined heartily on beef, potatoes and rice-pudding, and mixed the greater part of the beef gravy with his pudding; the mistress ate moderately of the first slices of the beef, took very little gravy, even to the beef, and none at all to the pudding; a little girl, their niece, dined on pudding alone, without gravy; and the prisoner dined after the family on the beef and potatoes. Accordingly the master suffered so severely as for two or three days to be in danger of his life, the mistress was also severely, but by no means so violently affected, the little girl did not suffer at all, and the servant had merely slight pain and sickness at stomach. The evidence thus procured was exceedingly strong, more