Medical jurisprudence / by Alfred S. Taylor.

  • Taylor, Alfred Swaine, 1806-1880.
Date:
1850
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical jurisprudence / by Alfred S. Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    fatal rapidity is Prussic acid. Poisoning by opium is commonly protracted for five or six hours. This poison has never been known to destroy life instantaneously or in a few minutes. I here exclude strychnia, as well as morphia and its salts; for these are poisons out of common reach. Thus, then, it may happen, that death will occur with such rapidity as to render it impossible, under the circumstances, to attribute it to narcotic poison. Chronic Poisoning.—When a poison destroys life rapidly, it is called a case of acute poisoning, to distinguish it from the chronic form, i. e. where death takes place slowly. Chronic poisoning is not a subject which often requires medico- legal investigation. Most poisons are capable, when their eifects are not rapidly manifested, either from the smallness of the dose or from timely treatment, of slowly undermining the powers of life, and killing the patient by producing emaciation and exhaustion. This is sometimes observed in the action of arsenic and corrosive sublimate; but it has been remarked also in cases of poisoning by the mineral acids and caustic alkalies. Death is here an indirect consequence: stricture of the oesophagus is induced, or the lining membrane of the stomach is destroyed and the process of digestion impaired—a condition which leads to emaciation and death. The time at which these indirect effects will prove fatal is, of course, liable to vary. A person has been known to die from a stricture of the oesophagus brought on by sulphuric acid, eleven months after the poison was swallowed; and there is no reason to doubt that instances may occur of a still more protracted nature. In these cases of chronic poisoning, there is considerable difficulty in assigning death exclusively to the original action of the poison, since the habits of life of the party, a tendency to disease, and other circumstances, may have concurred to accelerate or produce a fatal result. To connect a stricture of the oesophagus with the act of poisoning by a mineral acid, it is necessary to show that there was no tendency to this disease before the acid was administered that the symptoms appeared soon after the first effects of the poison went off that these symptoms continued to become aggravated until the time of death and that there was no other cause to which death could with any probability be referred. These remarks apply equally to the indirectly fatal effects of any poison; such, for instance, as the salivation occasionally induced by corrosive sublimate, when the acute symptoms of poisoning by that substance have passed away. It has been stated, that chronic poisoning is not a subject commonly requiring a criminal investigation. Two cases have, however, come before our tribunals, in which the facts connected with this form of poisoning were of some importance. I allude to those of Miss Blandy, tried at Oxford, in 1752, for the murder of her father by arsenic; and of a woman named Butterfield, tried at Croydon, in 1775, for the murder of a Mr. Scawen, by administering corrosive sublimate. In most cases, murderers destroy life by administering poison in very large doses; but in these instances, small doses were given at intervals—a fact which led to great medical doubt of the real cause of the symptoms before death. It is, however, very rare to hear of this form of poisoning. [As observed in the text, poisons vary exceedingly in the rapidity of their action; some cause death in a very short space of time, whilst others may not produce a fatal effect until after the lapse of a considerable period, but at the same time causing such a train of symptoms as clearly to indicate their course. In the laws of some countries, a time is fixed, within which, if the poisoned person dies, the criminal is con- sidered guilty of murder, whilst, if the poison does not exert its fatal influence during this period, no such charge lies against him. As a general rule, it may be assumed that most of the vegetable and animal poisons prove fatal in a few days or not at all; but that the mineral may cause death at a period long pos- terior to their ingestion.—Gr.] Accumulative Poisons.—It has been already remarked that some poisons have what is called an accumulative property, i, e. they may be administered for some