Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/94

 quantity of the fæces of a child and apparently a little water, but no vomited matters, and no white powder. The fluid discharged in presence of the apothecary was found on careful analysis to contain a large quantity of zinc, but not an atom of arsenic. She gradually recovered from the illness under which she laboured at the time I saw her, and in two days she admitted she was quite well, but continued to insist that she had taken the poison.—M. Tartra has related a singular case of the same kind, where a young woman feigned poisoning with nitric acid, and was not detected for several days.

Imputed poisoning differs in general from feigned poisoning only in so far as the symptoms which are feigned are imputed to the agency of another.

The imputation of the crime of poisoning by feigning or actually producing the symptoms, and contriving that poison shall be detected in the quarters where in actual cases it is usually sought for, has been not unfrequently attempted. Two important continental cases have already been referred to for other purposes [pp. 66, 76]; and I may here relate the heads of two English cases, which are of great interest, and will serve to illustrate the mode of procedure in such circumstances.

The first of these, which I have related elsewhere in detail, is a striking example of the power of science in eliciting the truth, and redounds highly to the credit of Mr. Thackrah, the medical gentleman who conducted the investigation.

Samuel Whalley was indicted at York Spring Assizes in 1821, for maliciously administering arsenic to Martha King, who was pregnant by him. The woman King swore, that the prisoner, after twice trying, but in vain, 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,—that in half an hour she was seized with symptoms of poisoning with some irritant poison,—and that she continued ill for a long time after. Mr. Thackrah found arsenic in the tarts that remained untouched, and likewise in some matter that was vomited in his presence after the administration of an emetic, as well as in other vomited matters which were preserved for him between his first and second visits. Her appearance, however, did not correspond with the complaint she made of her sufferings, her pulse and tongue were natural, and on careful investigation the following inconsistencies were farther detected. 1. She said she felt a coppery taste in the act of eating the tarts, a taste which arsenic certainly does not possess. 2. From the quantity of arsenic in the tarts which remained she could not have taken above ten grains, while even after repeated attacks of vomiting, the alleged matter subsequently preserved contained nearly fifteen grains. 3. The matter first vomited contained only one grain, while the matter alleged to have been vomited subsequently contained fifteen grains. 4. The time at which these fifteen grains were alleged to have been vomited was not till between two and three hours after