Osiander mentions, that Lebrun, a famous player on the horn, suffocated himself at Paris in 1809 with the fumes of sulphur; and that an apothecary at Pyrmont killed himself by going into the Grotto del Cane there, which, like that near Naples, is filled with carbonic acid gas.[1] Many instances have lately occurred in France of suicide caused by the emanations from burning charcoal in a close chamber. But these poisons come under the notice of the medical jurist chiefly because their effects may be mistaken for those of other kinds of violent death. Several mistakes of this nature are on record. Zacchias mentions the case of a man, who was found dead in prison under circumstances which led to the suspicion, that he had been privately strangled by the governor. But Zacchias proved this to be impossible, and ascribed death to the fumes from a choffer of burning charcoal left in the room.[2] A more striking instance of the kind occurred a few years ago at London. A woman, who inhabited a room with other five people, alarmed the neighbours one morning with the intelligence that all her fellow-lodgers were dead. On entering the room they found two men and two women actually dead, and another man quite insensible and apparently dying. This man, however, recovered; and as it was said that he was too intimate with the woman who gave the alarm, a report was spread that she had poisoned the rest, to get rid of the man's wife, one of the sufferers. She was accordingly put in prison, various articles in the house were carefully analysed for poison, and an account of the supposed barbarous murder was hawked about the streets. At last the man who recovered remembered having put a choffer of coals between the two beds, which held the whole six people; and the chamber having no vent, they had thus been all suffocated.[3]—The following is a similar accident not less remarkable in its circumstances. Four people in Gerolzhofen in Bavaria, were found one morning in bed, some dead, others comatose; and only one recovered. A neighbour who had supped with them, but slept at home, did not suffer. The stomach and intestines were found very red and black; and the coats of the stomach brittle. The contents of the stomach, the remains of their supper, and the wine were analysed without any suspicious substance being found. A little smoke having been noticed in the room by those who first entered it, the stove and fuel were examined, but without furnishing any insight into the cause of the accident. At last the cellar was examined, and then it was found that one of the sufferers had heated a copper vessel there so incautiously, that the fire communicated with the unplastered planks of the floor above. The planks had burnt with a low smothered flame, and the vapours passed through the crevices in the floor.[4] What Irrespirable Gases are Poisonous?
Some gases act negatively on the animal system by preventing the
