Page:Medical jurisprudence (IA medicaljurisprud03pari).pdf/24

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bowels, that he was obliged to dismount from his horse. Notwithstanding the copious evacuations, both upwards and downwards, the pain increased every moment, and it was necessary to take the patient back to Céserne, the place where they had dined, and where the priest arrived half dead. A medical man who was called in, thinking he had only to deal with an ordinary cholic, employed a number of fomentations, glysters, purgative draughts, and anodynes; although he saw that one of the women had also strong evacuations with pains and faintings, and that the other person complained of pains and of a weight at the stomach, he never suspected the presence of a poison, because the other woman had no complaint, and the landlord protested with many imprecations, that there was nothing dangerous in his dishes; however, the evacuations saved the patients, and as they diminished a little next morning, it allowed of their removing into the neighbourhood of Morgagni's residence, whom they immediately called in. This great physician having ascertained whether there was any dish at the table of which the woman who was in good health had not eaten, and having found that it was a great dish of rice which had been first served up, concluded from this circumstance that it was this dish that contained the poison. The difficulty however, was, that the priest who had eaten the least, and who had been on the whole extremely abstemious, was precisely the person who had suffered the most, and the soonest; that the woman, who had eaten more than the priest, had been less sick than he; and that the other person, who had eaten more than all the rest, was the one who was the least incommoded."

Was there no cheese rasped over this rice? de-