- racteristics of the symptoms of general poisoning, as contrasted with
those of natural disease, no one can hesitate to allow, that from them alone a medical jurist can never be entitled to pronounce that poisoning is certain. At the same time he must not on that account neglect them. For, in the first place, they are of great value as generally giving him the first hints of the cause of mischief, and so leading him to search in time for better evidence. Next, they will often enable him to say that poisoning was possible, probable, or highly probable; which, when the moral evidence is very strong, may be quite enough to decide the case. Thirdly, although they can never entitle him to say that poisoning was certain, they will sometimes enable him to say, on the contrary, that it was impossible. And to conclude, when the chemical or moral evidence proves that poison was given, the characters of the symptoms may be necessary to determine whether it was the cause of death.
As the last statement is one of consequence, and yet has been overlooked by some authors on medical jurisprudence in this country, it may be illustrated by one or two comments. It does not follow, because a poison has been given, that it is the cause of death; and therefore in every medico-legal inquiry the cause of the first symptoms and the cause of death should be made two distinct questions. The question, whether a poison, proved to have been administered, was the cause of death, is to be answered by attending to the second and third characteristics mentioned above, and considering whether the symptoms went on progressively increasing, or altered their nature during the course of the patient's illness, and whether the alteration, if any, was such as may occur in the case of poisoning generally, or of the special poison given. These remarks are very well exemplified by a case, of which I have related the particulars elsewhere,[1] that, namely, of Charles Munn, tried at the Inverary Spring Circuit of 1824 for the double crime of procuring abortion, and of murder by poisoning. The moral evidence and symptoms together left no doubt that arsenic had been given, and that the deceased, a girl with whom the prisoner cohabited, laboured under the effects of that poison in a very aggravated and complex form for twelve days. After that she began to recover rapidly, and in the course of a fortnight more was free of every symptom except weakness and pains in the hands and feet: In short, all things considered, she was thought to be out of danger. But she then became affected with headache and sleeplessness, and died in nineteen days more under symptoms of obscure general fever, without any local inflammation. Dr. Duncan, junior, and I, who were consulted by the Crown in this case, were of opinion,—that granting the girl's first illness, as appeared from moral and medical evidence, was owing to arsenic, her death could not be ascribed to it with any certainty. It is true that in a few instances the primary irritant symptoms caused by arsenic have been
- ↑ Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, ii. 309.
