A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred Swaine Taylor.

Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred Swaine Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    63/872 (page 49)
    MECHANICAL IRRITANTS. HABIT. administered, it cannot be said that there has been a noxious thin administered. He said, further, that there must be a distinction be- tween a thing only noxious when given in excess, and a thing which is a recognized poison and is known to be a thing noxious and pernicious in its effect. The fallacy of this reasoning will be apparent when it is stated that cantharides is a poison recognized by law as well as in medicine; that it finds a place in the schedule of the Act for regu- lating the sale of poisons, by the side of strychnine, prussic acid, and arsenic; and further, that these substances operate as poisons or are noxious only when given in excess, i.e. beyond a medicinal dose. The court was no doubt misled on this occasion by relying upon the opinion of a druggist. The quantity of cantharides attempted to be administered was quite sufficient to cause irritation of the bladder, strangury, and other unpleasant symptoms, and this would surely come under the head of annoyance or injury to health. Maclagan reports an instauce in which one grain and a half of cantharides” in three pills, caused strangury, and the substance was necessarily with- diawn. ( Brit. Med. Jour., 1877, i. p. 466.) Until the above judgment has been overruled, medical witnesses must look closely to the quantitv of the substance administered, and duly consider whether this was such as to be likely to injure, aggrieve, or annoy a person. The quantity of a poison wilfully administered does not affect the culpability of the person administering it. J Mechanical Irritants.—The substance administered may not be a poison in the medical signification of the term, and it may not be popularly considered such ; yet, when taken, it may be noxious to health or destructive to life. We have examples of substances of W f?Sr^v10v !? Peered glass, sponge, pins, needles, and such-like bodies, which have been administered with the wilful cesign of injuring, and have on various occasions given rise to criminal c arges. In cases of this kind, the legal guilt of a prisoner may often depend on the meaning assigned by a medical witness to the words T^Uf’mercury might be poured down the throat of an infant with the deliberate intention to destroy it. A question of a purely medical nature will then arise whether mercury is a ‘destructive thing’ or not; and the conviction of a prS will pro jably depend on the answer. Should a difference of opinion exist aa occurrence by no means unusual in medical evidence—the actions forlSavesaniCal civil have been enabled to tfke at once a quantitv <Ttb 0Plum-eat.er® EvSInfant? and ^ especially susceptible of the effects of £ £