The dose required to occasion these effects, and more especially to prove fatal, has not been determined with care. It must vary with the age of the sample used. It will vary also according as the water has been filtered or not; for what is not filtered often presents undissolved oil suspended in it or floating on its surface. One ounce has proved fatal;[1] and half an ounce has caused only temporary giddiness, loss of power over the limbs, stupor, and sense of pressure in the stomach.[2]
The appearances found in the dead body have varied. In general the blood has been fluid. The smell of bitter almond has commonly been distinct in the stomach.
The cherry-laurel water has attracted much attention in this country, in consequence of being the poison used by Captain Donnellan for the murder of Sir Theodosius Boughton. The trial of Donnellan, the most important trial for poisoning which ever took place in Britain, has given rise to some discrepance of opinion both among barristers and medical men, as to the sufficiency of the evidence by which the prisoner was condemned.[3] For my part, taking into account the general, as well as medical circumstances of the case, I do not entertain a doubt of his guilt.
Leaving the general evidence out of view, however, as foreign to the objects of the medical jurist's regard, it must be admitted that the medical evidence, taken by itself, was defective. It may be summed up shortly in the following terms:—Sir Theodosius was a young man of the age of twenty, and in perfect health, except that he had a slight venereal complaint of old standing, for which he occasionally took a laxative draught. On the morning of his death, his mother, Lady Boughton, remarked, while giving him his draught, that it had a strong smell of bitter almonds. Two minutes after he took it, she observed a rattling or gurgling in his stomach; in ten minutes more he seemed inclined to doze; and five minutes afterwards she found him quite insensible, with the eyes fixed upwards, the teeth locked, froth running out of his mouth, and a great heaving at his stomach and gurgling in his throat. He died within half an hour after swallowing the draught. The body was examined ten days after death, and the inspectors found great congestion of the veins every where, gorging of the lungs, and redness of the stomach. But the examination was unskilfully conducted. For the head was not opened; the fæces were allowed to rush from the intestines into the stomach; and, as a great quantity of fluid blood was found in each cavity of the chest, the subclavian veins must have been divided during the separation of the clavicles. Very little reliance, therefore, can be placed in the evidence from the inspection of the body.[4]
- ↑ Philosophical Transactions, 1739, No. 452.
- ↑ Wibmer, die Wirkung der Arzneimittel und Gifte, ii. 90.
- ↑ Considerations on the criminal proceedings of this country, on the danger of convictions on circumstantial evidence, and on the case of Mr. Donnellan. By a Barrister of the Inner Temple, 1781.—Phillips's Treatise on the Law of Evidence, Appendix, p. 30.—Male's Juridical Medicine, p. 86.—These authorities all consider the guilt of the prisoner doubtful.
- ↑ Trial, &c. taken in short hand by Gurney.
