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.

    79/872 (page 65)
    EVIDENCE FROM POST-MORTEM APPEARANCES. 6S continued to become aggravated until the time of death; and, lastly, that there was no other cause to which death could with any probability be referred. These remarks apply equally to the secondary fatal effects of any poison—such, for instance, as the salivation occasionally induced by corrosive sublimate, and the exhaustion and depression which are caused by tartarated antimony, when the acute symptoms of poisoning by these substances have passed away. The characters of chronic poisoning have acquired a special interest for the medical jurist. There is a difficulty about them which no accuracy of observation or judgment can surmount. The poison or poisons, if found in the dead body at all, must usually exist in minute quantities only. This alone will be sufficient to create a doubt whether death has been caused by the poison, although it is quite con- sistent with medical experience that a person may die from chronic poisoning, and little or none of the poison be found in the body after death. In the case of Mrs. James {Reg. v. Winslow), not more than the tenth part of a grain of antimony was found in the whole of the tissues of the body: in the case of Isabella Banks {Reg. v. Smethurst, C. C. C., Aug., 1859), the quantity was greater than this, but less than a grain altogether; while in the case of Mrs. Peters, none was found in the body, although a chemist had extracted a quantity of antimony as sulphide from the urine of the deceased within less than nine days before her death. In this case antimony had also been found in the evacuations during life, and to the secret use of this mineral had been referred the intermittent irritation of the stomach and bowels, from which deceased had suffered. The jury returned a verdict that the deceased had died from disease, and that death was accelerated by some irritant. (‘Lancet,’ 1860, ii. p. 119.) On some trials for poisoning (Reg. v. Palmer, C. C. C., 1856; Reg. v. Chantrelle, High Ct. of Just. Edin., May, 1878) it has been a contested .scientific question whether a jieison can die from poison and no trace of the poison remain in the body. The evidence in Mrs. Peters’s case not only proves the affirm- ative, but goes to show that antimony may act fatally and be entirely eliminated from the system in about a week. (‘ Med. Times and Graz. ’ 1860, ii. pp. 190, 271, 317.) 2. Evidence from the appearances in the body.—One of the chief means of determining whether a person has died from poison, is an examination of the body after death. In relation to external appear- ances, there are none indicative of poisoning upon which we can safely ie y. t was formerly supposed that the bodies of persons who were poisoned putrefied more rapidly than those of others who had died lorn natural disease; and evidence for or against poisoning was at one time derived from the external appearance of the body. This is now AddlvrWn6 an 7°r; the bod7ieS °f Persons poisoned are not more rapidly decomposed, cxtems paribus, than those of others who have died a sudden and violent death from any cause whatever thev iSfPO-SOflnS aCt Chjefiy U?°n tbe stomach and’intestines, which they nritate, inflame, and corrode. We may likewise meet with all the consequences of inflammation, such as softening, thickening, ulcera-