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I. CHEMICAL INTRODUCTION

Summary of symptoms exhibited by various poisons: (1) Sudden death—(2) Insensibility—(3) Vomiting—(4) Action on the eye—(5) Convulsions—(6) Chronic poisoning. Alkaloids, chemically and physiologically—Processes for their detection—Necessity for keeping the extracts separate—Dragendorff’s process—Dr. Guy’s sublimation process—Effects on animals—Doubtful value of this test—Preparation and effects of reagents: (1) Mayer’s—(2) Potassium tri-iodide—(3) Sonnenschein’s test—(4) Bismuth—(5) Phosphotungstic acid—(6) Picric acid—(7) Animal charcoal—(8) Platinic chloride—(9) Tannin or Tannic acid—(10) Phospho-antimonic acid—(11) Silico-tungstic acid—(12) Auric, palladium and mercuric chlorides—Ptomaines or cadaveric alkaloids; difficulties raised by their discovery—Principles to be observed in analysing 1

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Chapter II

TRIALS FOR POISONING BY PRUSSIC ACID 16

(1) John Tawell (Slough Case), March, 1850.

(2) George Ball (Lewes Case), July, 1860.

(3) Peter Walker (Egglesham Case), Dec., 1857.

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III. HYDROCYANIC OR PRUSSIC ACID

Nature of—Strength of different preparations of, English and foreign—Where found—Tests, preliminary: (1) Odour—(2) Silver—(3) Prussian blue—(4) Sulphur—(5) Guaiacum—(6) Uranium—(7) Picric acid—(8) Cupric sulphate—(9) Cobalt chloride—(10) Mercuric oxide—(11) Peroxide of hydrogen—(12) Mercurous nitrate. Test apparatus—Salts of hydrocyanic acid: (1) Potassium cyanide—(2) Mercuric cyanide—(3) Cyanides of the heavy metals—(4) Double cyanides—(5) Sulphocyanides—Oil of bitter almonds—Antidotes—Fatal dose—Symptoms—Post-mortem appearances—Drops and minims—Period after death at which hydrocyanic acid can be discovered—Formic acid to be tested for—Processes 55

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Chapter IV

TRIALS FOR POISONING BY STRYCHNIA 84

(1) William Palmer (Rugeley Case), May, 1856. (2) William Dove (Leeds Case), July, 1856. (3) Silas Barlow (Vauxhall Case), November, 1876.

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V. STRYCHNIA AND BRUCIA

Contained in St. Ignatius’s bean—False Angostura bark—Nux Vomica, &c.—Properties of strychnia—Facility of detection. Tests: (1) Microscope—(2) Taste—(3) Color test; ditto in other alkaloids, in bile, and in resinous and saccharine matters—(4) Physiological test (Marshall Hall)—(5) Bichromate of potash—(6) Picric acid—(7) Sulphuric acid and sodium nitrite—(8) Mercuric chloride. Preparations of strychnia: Vermin killers—Battle’s, Gibson’s, Miller’s, Marsden’s, Barber’s, Hunter’s, Keating’s—Brucia—Igasuria—Igasuric acid. Doses of strychnia: medicinal, fatal, recovery—Nux vomica. Fatal period for strychnia—Symptoms in man, commencement of symptoms, if given in powder, in solution, in pills. Explanation of symptoms: by hysteria, tetanus, epilepsy, gritty granules on spinal cord—Angina pectoris. Post-mortem appearances—Treatment—Antidotes—Dr. Taylor’s evidence—Ptomaine—Did Cook die from morphia?—Granular preparations at St. Thomas’s Hospital 276

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Chapter VI

TRIALS FOR POISONING BY ARSENIC 294

(1) Madeline Smith (Glasgow Case), June, 1857. (2) Ann Merritt (Clapton Case), March, 1850.

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VII. ARSENIC

The element (arsenicum)—The oxide (white arsenic)—Arsenicum—Arsenicum trioxide. Forms of: (1) Crystalline—(2) Amorphous—Solubility. Uses and occurrences: (1) Steeping, wheat—(2) Preservation of skins—(3) Antiseptics—(4) Glass making—(5) Fur in boilers—(6) Candles—(7) Preservation of wood—(8) Sheep washes—(9) Scheele’s green and emerald green as pigments in sweets (case of Franklin and Randall), wall papers, toys, &c.—(10) Medicinal—(11) For horses—(12) Tooth-stopping—(13) Aniline dyes—(14) Fireworks—(15) Rat and fly poisons (case of Maria Gage)—(16) For cleansing metals—(17) Arsenic eaters—(18) Cosmetics—(19) For bronzing metals—(20) Beer brewed from glucose—(21) American paper collars—(22) Speculum metal—(23) Inhalation for asthma and bronchitis—(24) Mineral waters. Sulphides of Arsenic: (1) Orpiment (case of M. A. Burdock)—(2) Realgar. Arsenic acid—The arsenates—Arsenic trichloride—Arseniuretted hydrogen—Methods of extraction—Tests—Modifications of old processes suggested—Marsh’s test, distinction of results in arsenic and antimony—Reinsch’s test—Doses—Antidotes—Physiological effects—Remarks—Did L’Angelier commit suicide? 373

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Chapter VIII

TRIALS FOR POISONING BY ANTIMONY 397

(1) Dr. Pritchard (Glasgow Case), July, 1865. (2) Dr. Smethurst (Richmond Case), August, 1859. (3) Thos. Winslow (Liverpool Case), August, 1860.

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IX. ANTIMONY

Properties of the metal—Alloys—Compounds—Chlorides, sulphides, oxides, hydride. Tartar emetic—solubility, composition, uses and occurrence—commercial, veterinary, medicinal. Doses and preparations—fatal dose, fatal period. Physiological effects—Antidotes—Separations and tests—(1) Reinsch’s—Presence of antimony; purity of the copper employed, how to be secured; different stains resulting from presence of arsenic, antimony, mercury, bismuth, tin, silver, gold, platinum, palladium, sulphur compounds—(2) Dr. Maclagan’s test in Pritchard’s trial—(3) Marsh’s test—Remarks on Pritchard’s trial—On Smethurst’s trial—Dr. Taylor and Mr. Herapath—Arsenic in bismuth—Antimony in grey powder 490

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Chapter X

TRIALS FOR POISONING BY ACONITIA OR ACONITINE 514

(1) McConkey—Dublin. (2) G. H. Lamson (Wimbledon Case), December, 1881.

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XI. ACONITE, AND ACONITIA, OR ACONITINE

Plants: Aconitum napellus—A. ferox. Alkaloids: aconitia—Pseudaconitia—other bases—Decompositions—Proportions in the plants. Commercial aconitia—German aconitia—English aconitia. Separation—Tests, chemical and physiological. History—Preparations, official and non-official. Physiological effects—Causes of death—Post-mortem appearances—Treatment and antidotes—Remarks 568

INDEX 583

ADDENDA.

A.

THE following is my own experience of the differences between strychnia and morphia.—C. G. S.

┌—─—─—─—─—─—──────────—─—─—─┬—─—─—─—─—─—────────—─┬—─—─—─—───────—─—─┐ │ │ MORPHIA. │ STRYCHNIA. │ ├—─—─—─—─—─—──────────—─—─—─┼—─—─—─—─—─—────────—─┼—─—─—─—─—───────—─┤ │Concent. H_{2}SO_{4}—cold. │If pure, nothing at │If pure, nothing. │ │ │ first. │Some yellow─brown.│ │ ” ” warmed.│Violet, not strong. │ Do. │ │ To this warmed solution │ │ │ │add:— │ │ │ ├—─—─—─—─—─—─—─—──────────—─┼—─—─—─—─—─—────────—─┼—─—─—─—───────—─—─┤ │ MnO_{2}. │Red, changing slowly │Deep blue purple│ │ │ to brown, then │ —tored purple— │ │ │ orange. On dilution,│cherryred—finally │ │ │ yellow─brown. │(changes slow). On│ │ │ │ dilution, rich │ │ │ │ orange red. │ ├—─—─—─—─—─—─—──────────—─—─┼—─—────────—─—─—─—─—─┼—─—─—─—───────—─—─┤ │ K_{6}Cfy_{2}. │Violet, changing to │Same changes, but │ │ │ orange; not strong. │ more rapid and │ │ │ On dilution, at once│ less distinct. On│ │ │ destroyed to │ dilution, at once│ │ │ greenish─yellow │ destroyed to │ │ │ solution, turning │ greenish─yellow │ │ │blue. │ solution. │ ├—─—─—─—─—─—──────────—─—─—─┼—─—─—─—─—─—────────—─┼—─—─—───────—─—─—─┤ │ K_{2}Cr_{2}O_{7}. │Red─brown, │Same as with │ │ │ orange─brown, │ MnO_{2}, but more│ │ │ green. │ evanescent and │ │ │ On dilution, │ rapid in change. │ │ │ green. │ On dilution, at │ │ │ │ once removed to │ │ │ │ yellowish─brown. │ ├—─—─—─—─—─—─—─—──────────—─┼—─—─—─—────────—─—─—─┼—─—─—───────—─—─—─┤ │ HNO_{3} concent. │_Intense brownish─ │In the cold, │ │ │ red, changing │ nothing if pure.│ │ │ to brown— bleached │ On warming, │ │ │ by SnCl{2}. │ orange─yellow │ │ │ │ —then SnCl_{2} │ │ │ │ brown changing│ │ │ │ with excess to │ │ │ │ yellow. │ └—─—─—─—─—─—──────────—─—─—─┴—─—─—─—────────—─—─—─┴—─—─—─—───────—─—─┘

B.

The chlorine used in the separation of arsenic (p. 385) must be pure. The best process for making it is to heat pure potass. dichromate with pure hydrochloric acid. The latter may be obtained by heating the “pure” acid of commerce in a retort until a portion of the distillate gives no indication of arsenic by the tests. The remainder in the retort is then arsenic-free.

* * * * *

ERRATUM.

Page 397, line 11, for “Waislow,” read, “Winslow.”

TRIALS FOR POISONING.

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I. CHEMICAL INTRODUCTION

Summary of symptoms exhibited by various poisons: (1) Sudden death—(2) Insensibility—(3) Vomiting—(4) Action on the eye—(5) Convulsions—(6) Chronic poisoning. Alkaloids, chemically and physiologically—Processes for their detection—Necessity for keeping the extracts separate—Dragendorff’s process—Dr. Guy’s sublimation process—Effects on animals—Doubtful value of this test—Preparation and effects of reagents: (1) Mayer’s—(2) Potassium tri-iodide—(3) Sonnenschein’s test—(4) Bismuth—(5) Phosphotungstic acid—(6) Picric acid—(7) Animal charcoal—(8) Platinic chloride—(9) Tannin or tannic acid—(10) Phospho-antimonic acid—(11) Silico-tungstic acid—(11) Auric, palladium and mercuric chlorides—Ptomaines or cadaveric alkaloids; difficulties raised by their discovery—Principles to be observed in analysing.

BEFORE proceeding to a separate examination of the poisons used in the following trials, it will be advisable to take a general view of poisons, specially noticing those that we have selected as the most important legally. They do not admit, perhaps, of accurate classification, but inasmuch as the manner of death and symptoms are usually the most available indication as to the nature of the poison that has acted, the following arrangement will be serviceable. The heads indicate the most prominent symptom:

I. SUDDEN DEATH.—Large quantities of any poison might be rapid in fatal result, but the sudden poisons proper are:—concentrated sulphuric, nitric, and hydrochloric acids; poisonous gases and vapours, such as carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen (see Casper’s Forensic Medicine, Case CCXLI.), carbonic oxide, arseniuretted and antimoniuretted hydrogen, and certain rare organic compounds, as kakodyl, &c.; strychnia sometimes, oxalic acid in large doses, chloroform under certain circumstances. But beyond all others, the quickest of poisons is hydrocyanic or prussic acid.

II. INSENSIBILITY, generally following nervous excitement. Morphia and opium; henbane (Hyoscyamus); stramonium; belladonna; nicotine (tobacco); darnel (lolium temulentum); hemlock (Conium maculatum); water hemlock (Œnanthe crocata); fool’s parsley (Æthusa cynapium), [Dr. J. Harley shows that this is not so poisonous as believed: see St. Thomas’s Hospital Reports, x. 25]; Indian hemp (Cannabis indica); Woody Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara); Solanum nigrum; the berries of Potato (Solanum tuberosum); Lobelia inflata: Foxglove (Digitalis); cocculus indicus; certain fungi (notably Amanita muscaria); chloroform; chloral; butylchloral —“croton chloral”): amylene; methylene dichloride; sulphuretted hydrogen; carbonic oxide; and many other substances usually classed as narcotics.

III. VOMITING.—Irritant poisons, such as acids, alkalies, alkaline salts in considerable doses (even common salt has proved fatal: see Christison[1]); most soluble compounds of the heavy metals (especially antimony, arsenic, zinc, and copper); certain vegetal alkaloids (from colchicum, laburnum, yew, savin, ipecacuanha, capsicum, pepper, ergot, many species of Ranunculaceæ, the Hellebores, and some fungi); cantharides, turpentine, and essential oils, &c. Pain in the digestive organs, purging, and general inflammation are commonly present. Most of the medicinal purgatives will produce sickness and vomiting if given in overdoses; of course unwholesome food or disease may frequently be the cause.

IV. ACTION ON THE EYE.—Opium and morphia, calabar bean, aconite (?), and strychnia, contract the pupil: belladonna, henbane, tobacco, stramonium, digitalis and hemlock, dilate the pupil. The effect is often temporary, and sometimes is reversed after a time. It is a valuable indication in after-experiments on animals.

V. CONVULSIONS.—Strychnia, brucia, and some fungi: but this symptom is by no means confined to these, and may even result as tetanus, from disease or irritants (see Trial of Palmer). Morphia, in rare cases, has also caused it.

VI. CHRONIC POISONING, prostration and wasting. Antimony, mercury, and lead in small repeated doses. With the two latter, but more especially with lead, there is a blue line at the edge of the gums; constipation and colic, paralysis and trembling of the limbs. As lead frequently occurs as an impurity in food, and also may be absorbed by those working with it, these symptoms may be often accidental. Mercury also is given, less than of old, it is true, but still systematically by some, as a regular course in syphilis, &c.: also to children in teething powders. Antimony has been almost abandoned in medicine, from its depressant effect. In these cases, motive, amount, and necessity of dose, and right to administer, must be considered before wilful poisoning can be proved. The analysis, therefore, must be strictly quantitative, which is fortunately tolerably easy.

The above summary is by no means perfect, since there are minor differences in each class, which may sometimes rise into such prominence as to confuse the classification. But in medical evidence on the individual poisons of which we treat, those physiologically resembling them in action are always most heard of at the trial, and questions are asked whether this or that may not produce the same symptoms; and hence it is well to direct attention to the analogues of our types.

The primary idea of an alkaloid is derived from its resemblance to an alkali. Alkaloids are often called also “Organic Bases.” Their names terminate in—ia or ine.[2] They are more or less alkaline to test paper, and combine with acids to form salts which are neutral in reaction and often crystallizable. Only a few of the alkaloids are liquid and easily volatile, but almost all can be volatilized by careful heating at definite temperatures, giving in many cases a sublimate of characteristic appearance under the microscope, either of crystals, globules, or a mere film. In a free state, the alkaloids are very slightly soluble in water, but soluble in alcohol, and generally in ether and chloroform. Some are soluble in benzine, others in amylic alcohol, petroleum spirit, acetic ether, &c. On a judicious use of these various solvents depend the different processes of isolation, among which Dragendorff’s is the most complete, but so complicated that it is rarely used in its entirety. Fortunately there is generally a clue more or less definite to the probable poison administered, enabling a shorter and quicker method to be adopted. For further details as to these processes see Blyth’s Manual of Practical Chemistry. The sulphates, chlorides, and acetates of the alkaloids are generally soluble in water; if ammonia or potash be added to the solution, a precipitate (usually crystalline) of the free alkaloid occurs if the solution be of moderate strength.

Chemically, the alkaloids are derived from ammonia (NH_{3}) by substituting various organic groups or “compound radicles” (compounds of carbon and hydrogen), for the hydrogen of the ammonia. They are therefore “compound ammonias,” or “amines.” Nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen, are always present in natural alkaloids, the non-volatile ones, including the greater number, also contain oxygen.

Physiologically, alkaloids as a class have a powerful action on the human and animal frame. The medicinal properties of plants are generally due to these substances, though many are still undiscovered or imperfectly known. They exist in the plant combined with vegetal acids, some of which are characteristic, as aconitic acid in aconite, meconic in opium, igasuric (?) in nux vomica, &c. The very small quantity which may sometimes be fatal (a fraction of a grain of the pure alkaloid), the indefiniteness of many of their chemical reactions, and the facility with which they decompose if too high a heat, or too strong reagents, be employed in their extraction, render the detection often a difficult, and sometimes an impossible matter. Fortunately, however, fresh tests and better processes develop from every case, and other indications, from symptoms and collateral circumstances, rarely fail to bring home the guilt even to the most ingenious and scientific of poisoners.

For extracting the alkaloids from animal matters the following process has been used by the author. Mince finely, digest with rectified spirit and enough acetic acid to just acidify, warm to blood-heat for 15 minutes, filter: this is the first extract. Warm the insoluble matters with more alcohol and filter again: this is the second extract. Repeat the extraction a third time. Keep the three extracts separate. Each should be evaporated at as low a temperature as possible, not exceeding 50° C., and preferably in a vacuum at the ordinary temperature, if this can be done fairly quickly. The syrupy residues must be treated with water and a drop of acetic acid, passed through wet filters to separate fat, rendered just alkaline with ammonia, and shaken with a moderate quantity of a mixture of equal volumes of ether and chloroform (Allen). By a stoppered funnel or burette the ethereal layer is separated, the shaking with ether and chloroform and the separation repeated a second and a third time, the ethereal extracts mixed, transferred to a large porcelain dish, and evaporated, first in a current of air, then in a vacuum or spontaneously. As the solvents evaporate, water generally appears: this hinders any crystallization. Therefore the residue must be rendered dry, then dissolved in a little anhydrous chloroform (dried by standing over fused calcium chloride), and again evaporated in air in a large watch glass. The residue will generally be crystalline under the microscope if any alkaloid be present. Dissolve again in chloroform, transfer to a graduated burette, make up to a convenient volume (say 10 cubic centimetres), and transfer a measured fraction to a number of watch glasses, reserving about one-fourth for any subsequent quantitative test that may be necessary. Allow the liquid in the watch glasses to spontaneously evaporate. To the first add a little water and a very minute quantity of dilute hydrochloric acid, and cautiously taste a portion. A tingling of the lips and subsequent numbness indicate aconite; intense bitterness points to strychnia; if there be no taste at all it is unlikely that any alkaloid is present. There are some alkaloids of a peppery taste; these are irritants, and are not common as poisons. Bitterness is the most frequent characteristic.

2. Moisten the contents of the second watch glass with a little water and a trace of acetic acid, and apply through an incision in the skin of the back of a young frog. He should be kept as comfortable as possible and the symptoms observed. Strychnia readily produces tetanus in this animal; other poisons also have peculiar effects. Some observers have used mice, rabbits, or cats; in the Palmer trial it was observed that dogs were not employed because they were inconvenient and might bite! On the whole this so-called physiological test has been overrated, as it is hardly to be expected that an animal with its back cut and otherwise injured will not exhibit some symptoms; and all who have kept wild animals in confinement will know how soon they become, first almost convulsive from excitement, then finally sink into stupor and die. If necessary, any judge may grant a special licence to the experts in a trial to make experiments on animals, otherwise such cruelty is rendered penal by the Vivisection Act.[3]

3. To the third watch glass, after the contents have been dissolved as before, a drop of a solution of iodine in potassium iodide is added. Nearly all alkaloids give a brown precipitate. If none occur, a negative conclusion may be expected.

4. Test the fourth watch glass in one corner for strychnia by concentrated sulphuric acid and peroxide of manganese; in another corner for morphia by iodic acid and starch; in a third corner for brucia (and morphia) by strong nitric acid. (See the special paragraphs on these reactions, pp. 280, 285.)

5. If there is still no indication, and no information has been obtained from other sources, it may be necessary to employ Dragendorff’s process on the remainder. But if the poison has been discovered, the solution reserved in the burette should be evaporated, dissolved in water and a little dilute acid, avoiding heat, and titrated by Mayer’s reagent to ascertain the quantity.[4]

The second and third extractions of the organs must now be considered. Most of the text-books recommend that all the extracts should be mixed. The objection to this is, that since the alkaloid is usually present in very small amount, the first extraction will remove nearly all of it, while the second and third will mainly contain other matters, and therefore will be only adding to the impurities, and consequently to the difficulty of isolation. If it be worth while, the second and third extracts may be treated separately as above, and should any further quantity of alkaloid be found, it may be determined quantitatively, and the amount added to that already obtained.

It has been proposed to precipitate the original spirituous extract by neutral or basic acetate of lead, which throws down many impurities, but leaves the alkaloids in solution. After filtration, the liquid is treated with a current of sulphuretted hydrogen to remove lead; again filtered, evaporated (as speedily as can be done without overheating) to a moderate bulk, and treated with a little ammonia and with ether-chloroform as before. If the sulphuretted hydrogen be left exposed to the air for some time, it oxidizes to sulphuric acid, which, during and after evaporation, tends to destroy the alkaloid. Hence I have found it advisable to remove the H_{2}S quickly by a current of carbonic acid and warming—previous to evaporation. But this process is not good for alkaloids, as sulphur compounds are often formed, which interfere with subsequent operations.

The foregoing process may fail to extract morphia, curarine, and solanine, as these, being very little soluble in ether-chloroform, may remain behind in the aqueous liquid. This, therefore, should be afterwards treated in one of the following ways:—

1. Heat some redistilled amylic alcohol nearly to boiling (it boils at 120° C.), add an equal volume to the aqueous (alkaline) solution; shake vigorously, separate while still hot, and shake again with a fresh, but rather smaller, quantity of the hot solvent. The united amylic alcohol solutions will contain all the morphia, but can only be distilled in vacuo, since at 120° C. the stability of the morphia would be endangered. It is better to extract the morphia from the amylic solution by shaking with successive small portions of weak acetic acid, separating each time, till the acidity remains unneutralized. The alkaloid will now be in the acid solution. Nearly neutralize this with ammonia, evaporate at a gentle heat, and apply the special tests.

2. Instead of the above, the aqueous alkaline solution may be agitated with a mixture of equal volumes of ether and pure acetic ether (the latter having been previously purified from free acid by standing over powdered carbonate of lime). Although this mixture does not extract the morphia so readily as amylic alcohol, it has this advantage that, after separation from the aqueous layer, it can be evaporated at a moderate temperature, when the morphia, if in sufficient quantity, will be left in the crystalline state, and can be tested as usual.

If sufficient material be at hand, of course both processes may be used.[5]

Selmi (Gazz. Chim. Ital. vi., 32) has given a process for alkaloidal extraction of which I have no experience.

When the alkaloid is obtained in a sufficiently pure form and in sufficient quantity, the sublimation process of Dr. Guy, as improved by Blyth, may be used. For the entire original method, see Blyth’s Practical Chemistry, page 285.

Dr. Guy’s “subliming cell” is a ring of glass tubing about ⅛-inch long and ⅓ to ½-inch diameter, ground true and smooth at top and bottom, resting on a circle of thin microscope glass, and covered with another similar circle. The alkaloid, thoroughly dry, is placed on the lower disc (a drop of the solution may be evaporated on it), the whole fitted together, and floated on mercury, or better, fusible metal, contained in a small glass beaker nearly full, supported on wire gauze over a small flame. A thermometer held by a clamp dips in the liquid metal. With a hand lens of as high power as possible, the melting point, and also the point when the first sublimate occurs on the upper glass, may be observed. As soon as the sublimate has become sufficiently distinct, the upper disc is removed, replaced by another, and examined under ¼-inch power of the microscope. The heat is slowly raised till charring occurs, and anything characteristic noted.

Morphia gives a clouding, consisting of minute dots, at 150° C.; from 188° to 200° C., distinct crystals are obtained; then it commences to brown, melt, and carbonize.

Strychnia gives a minute sublimate of fine needles at 169° C., and melts at about 221° C.

Brucia melts at 151° C., browns easily, but gives no true sublimate.

Aconitine or aconitia melts at 183° to 184° C.

Pseudaconitine melts at 104° to 105° C., and easily decomposes, giving off water.

Commercial aconitine usually melts below 100° C., and gives an amorphous sublimate above 150° C.

The reactions of the other alkaloids will be found in Blyth’s Practical Chemistry.

In order to avoid repetition, the mode of preparing the general reagents for alkaloids will be given here.

1. Mayers Reagent, potassio-iodide of mercury, already described (p. 7; Liebig’s Annalen, 133, 286), gives white precipitates with almost all alkaloids. The latter can be recovered from the precipitate by treating it with a solution of zinc chloride mixed with caustic soda. (Mayer.)

2. Potassium tri-iodide, a solution of iodine in potassium iodide, gives a brown or reddish precipitate.[6]

3. Sonnenschein’s test, Phosphomolybdic acid, is prepared as follows. To a warm solution of molybdate of ammonia acidified with nitric acid, phosphate of soda is added as long as any yellow precipitate is obtained. The precipitate is washed with water containing a little nitric acid, and heated with sodium carbonate solution till dissolved. Evaporate to dryness, heat to expel ammonia, add a little nitric acid and heat again. One part of the residue is then dissolved in a mixture of one part of nitric acid of 1·4 sp. gr., and nine parts of water. With this reagent strychnia gives a pale, other alkaloids a bright yellow flocculent precipitate, in very dilute solutions. The precipitates are soluble in ammonia, with the production of a greenish blue colour in the cases of aconitia and morphia. From the alkaline liquid the alkaloid can be dissolved out by at once shaking with ether-chloroform or hot amylic alcohol as already described. Instead of using ammonia, the precipitate may be agitated with barium carbonate, which has less tendency to decompose the base on its liberation.

4. A solution of bismuth iodide in iodide of potassium is recommended by Dragendorff (Zeitschr. f. Chimie, 1866, 478). 80 grammes of commercial bismuth subnitrate are dissolved in 200 cubic centimetres of nitric acid of sp. gr. 1·18: 272 grammes of potassium iodide dissolved in a little water are added, the potassium nitrate allowed to crystallize out, and the whole diluted to one litre. This solution precipitates most alkaloids. The precipitate can be treated with sodium carbonate and the liberated alkaloid extracted by ether-chloroform, &c. For the equivalents, see Maugini, Gazz. Chim. Ital. 12, 155.

5. Scheibler has proposed Phosphotungstic acid as a precipitant. Sodium tungstate is digested with half its weight of phosphoric acid, sp. gr. 1·13: on standing, phosphotungstic acid crystallizes. Its solution is said to give a distinct precipitate with 1/200000 of a grain of strychnia and 1/100000 of quina, and with similar amounts of other alkaloids. From this precipitate the alkaloid is obtained by treating with sufficient milk of lime and shaking with ether-chloroform, &c., as before. He recommends the previous removal of impurities by lead acetate and sulphuretted hydrogen as already described (p. 7) (Fresenius, Zeitschr. f. anal. Chemie, 12, 315).

6. Picric acid, a saturated aqueous solution, gives precipitates in neutral solutions of morphia and atropia. In solutions acidified with sulphuric acid it gives the following:—morphia, and pseudomorphia, no precipitate; aconitia, a precipitate only in concentrated solutions; other alkaloids of opium, a thick precipitate.[7]

7. Animal charcoal, previously purified by hydrochloric acid and thorough washing with water, when digested with neutral or alkaline solutions of alkaloids, not too dilute, absorbs them from the liquid. The charcoal, washed twice or thrice with small quantities of water, is dried at a moderate temperature, and boiled with strong alcohol, which extracts the alkaloid. This process has been used for separating picrotoxin from beer, but has the inconvenience that the alkaloid is liable to gradual oxidation within the pores of the charcoal, and that the separation is never complete. It is this property that has caused charcoal to be recommended as an antidote in poisoning.

8. All alkaloids form with platinic chloride double salts of more or less sparing solubility. These precipitates, washed, dried and weighed, and then burnt, leave metallic platinum, the amount of which yields a clue to the composition of the base. But aconitine and narcotine are only thrown down from concentrated solutions, and a few are not precipitated at all. Hence this test is of only occasional value in toxicological work. The same may be said of auric chloride.

9. Tannin or tannic acid, a moderately strong solution in water, throws down most alkaloids. Coffee and tea, and other tannin-containing infusions, have, therefore, been used as antidotes with dubious success. As a test it is not distinctive.

10. Phospho-antimonic acid (Schultze), prepared by mixing antimony pentachloride with ordinary sodium phosphate and decanting the clear liquid, gives whitish amorphous precipitates with alkaloids.

11. Silico-tungstic acid is prepared by boiling commercial tungstate of soda with fresh gelatinous silica. Filter and allow to crystallize. This gives precipitates with very dilute solutions of alkaloids, but it is also precipitated by ammonium chloride (Godefroy, Arch. d. Pharm., Nov. 1879). Zaubenheimer recommends it as a most delicate test: the precipitate may be decomposed by soda or potash, and the base extracted by ether-chloroform.

12. Auric chloride, palladious chloride, and mercuric chloride have been proposed, but are not of much use. Potassium chromate and sulphocyanide, and sodium nitroprusside give somewhat insoluble precipitates, generally crystalline and of characteristic appearance under the microscope. These tests should be strong, and must be used in small quantity.

PTOMAINES OR CADAVERIC ALKALOIDS.—Much attention has been attracted lately by the possible interference to toxicological detections owing to the undoubted existence of natural alkaloids in the dead body unpoisoned. Some of these, called by Selmi “Ptomaines” ([Greek: ptôma], a corpse), somewhat simulate strychnia, &c., in their chemical and physiological characters. The observation is not new, as years ago, in the Privy Council’s reports, Thudichum called attention to alkaloids separated by Sonnenschein’s process (phosphomolybdic acid) from the brain, urine, and from decomposed bodies. Various substances of the kind have also been found by other investigators. To these “cadaveric alkaloids” have been attributed the “sausage poisoning,” so frequent in Germany (for cases, see Casper’s Handbook, vol. 3), poisoning by various foods, such as tinned meats, cheese, &c. Some are irritants, others narcotics: different periods and circumstances of putrefaction producing different compounds.

In an Italian criminal prosecution, F. Ciotto, who made the investigation of the corpse, gave it as his opinion that strychnia was probably present. Selmi, for the defence, pointed out differences from strychnia, and considered the compound to be a ptomaine. [Arch. Pharm. (3), 19, 187.] This will show the importance of the subject.

Casali (Gazetta, 1881, 312) regards ptomaines as not true alkaloids, but as “acid or basic amidated compounds.” It is only the basic ones that will interfere with testing. Panum and Bergmann have isolated a substance called “sepsin,” generated by putrefaction, poisonous, acting like a ferment but not destroyed by boiling, soluble in water, but insoluble in alcohol, and thereby distinguished from alkaloids. Sonnenschein and Zuelzer found a product of putrefaction which produced tetanic symptoms, besides one resembling atropine. But these substances, or similar ones, can be produced without putrefaction, as Paterno and Spica have shown that fresh blood and fresh albumen (white of egg) yielded, with phosphomolybdic acid, potassio-mercuric iodide, and other alkaloidal reagents, precipitates like those of the vegetal alkaloids. Selmi has even supposed that death from various diseases may be due to the formation of these compounds. The same author obtained from a dead body one month after death a considerable amount of a crystallizable ptomaine, giving reactions like those of alkaloidal poisons, and having poisonous effects on frogs.

Brouardel and Bouting (Compt. Rend. 92, 1056) propose the reducing action of ptomaines as a distinction between them and vegetal alkaloids. The solution in weak acid is added to a dilute mixture of ferric chloride and potassium ferricyanide: the latter, if a ptomaine be present, is reduced to ferrocyanide, and Prussian blue is thereby precipitated. But Spica (Gazetta, 11, 486) has shown that strychnia, brucia, morphia, and some others produce this reaction readily, and Beckurts (Arch. Pharm. 3, 20, 104) adds aconitine and others as producing it slowly. Hence the distinction is delusive. See also Husemann (Arch. Pharm. 3, 16, 169; also 3, 20, 270), Tauret (Compt. Rend. 92, 1163).

The discovery of these bodies has certainly raised a new difficulty for toxicologists, and suggested a new and plausible defence, as it must be confessed that at present there is no general method of distinguishing between “cadaveric” and vegetal alkaloids. Yet this mainly affects the “physiological” tests—on frogs and other small animals—for there is no ptomaine yet discovered which gives all the reactions of strychnia, morphia, &c. If a chemist be asked, “Could any other substance produce these reactions?” he can only answer, “I do not know of any”; he cannot aver the impossibility. Then the circumstantial evidence must decide.

In conclusion, the following principles should be noted:—

1. The quantity of poison found is generally only a small fraction of the quantity taken. The vomit and evacuations are frequently lost, and much may be decomposed by vital actions in the body, or by putrefaction. That which has caused death is probably thereby either decomposed or so combined as to be rendered undetectible: that which is found is merely the surplus beyond the fatal dose. This would account for the frequent non-discovery in the tissues when a small amount has been given, or much time has elapsed. To metallic poisons this does not apply, as, unless eliminated, they can always be found. See further under Strychnia.

2. The symptoms will differ according to the dose, the form (solid or solution, pure or admixed), habit, or idiosyncrasy, the state of health, &c.

3. In the post-mortem examination, appearances common to dead bodies generally are often mistaken for the effects of poison. See Casper’s Handbook, vol. I., et passim.

4. Unhealthy or improper food or acute disease may cause suspicious symptoms. This is the commonest solution of suspected poisoning.

5. In experiments on animals, it may be objected that they are inconclusive as to man. This is not strictly true. But if a recent vomit proves poisonous to an animal, with the same symptoms as in the man, that is almost conclusive evidence.

6. When a poison is not found by analysis, it does not follow that it has not caused death. Unequal distribution, uncertainty of tests, improper securing of the samples (Palmer case), decomposition or elimination of the poison, may hinder discovery.

7. In every case, if possible, the approximate quantity of the poison should be ascertained and stated. This specially applies to substances that may have been administered medicinally.

“If poison be administered with intent to murder, it is not necessary that there should be enough in the article administered to cause death, or that it should be given in such a way as to act fatally. If any poison be there, and the intent be proved, the crime of attempting to administer poison is complete.” [Judge’s ruling in Hartley, Cent. Crim. Court, May 12th, 1850; Reg. v. Bacon, Lincoln Summer Assizes, 1857; Reg. v. Southgate, Chelmsford Lent Assizes; Reg. v. Cluderay, York, 1849].

For minute directions as to the conduct of toxicological investigations, see Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence, 1873, I., 202-209; also Guy and Ferrier’s Forensic Medicine, 1881, p. 359, et seq.

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II. TRIALS FOR POISONING BY HYDROCYANIC OR PRUSSIC ACID

Two cases are reported under this head. The first that of John Tawell, for the murder of his mistress, Sarah Hart, at Salthill, near Windsor, tried at the Spring Assizes at Aylesbury, 1845, before the late Baron Parke (Lord Wensleydale). The second—a case of misadventure—the trial of George Ball, a surgeon, at Lewes, for the murder of his mother by the negligent administration of an overdose of this poison, medicinally, before the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (Coleridge) Summer Assizes, Lewes, 1860.

TRIAL OF JOHN TAWELL FOR POISONING SARAH HART AT SALTHILL BY PRUSSIC ACID.

March 12, 13, and 14, 1845, SPRING ASSIZES, AYLESBURY, before BARON PARKE.

HISTORY OF THE CASE.

The trial of John Tawell, of Berkhampstead, Berks, for the murder of Sarah Hart, at Hall Place, Slough, attracted more than usual attention, from the cruelty of the act in poisoning the woman whom he had seduced, the position and popular character of the murderer as a benevolent and hospitable Quaker, noted for his charities, and the novelty of the mode by which his detection was mainly insured. The electric telegraph had only very lately been established on the line of the Great Western Railway, and though Tawell lost no time after committing the act, in getting into the train for London at Slough, the telegraph outstripped him, and on his arrival at the Paddington station he was recognised, and tracked to his lodgings, and thus his immediate arrest secured.

Tawell’s life had been of a remarkable character. Originally a commercial traveller, he had exhibited a strange mixture of great shrewdness and money-making talent, combined with an outward show of religious observance. As a young man he had been indicted for forging a bill for £1000, and had he been tried on the counts for forging, or uttering, he would doubtless have been executed. By some influence, however, he was allowed to plead guilty to the count for having the bill in his possession (a nolle prosequi being entered on the others), and sentenced to transportation for life. “Accordingly,” says Mr. Justice Therry, who knew him well in Sydney, “he came out to the colony as a convict. Besides being a commercial traveller for some time, he had been in an apothecary’s shop in England, and on obtaining partial exemption from convict discipline, became the principal druggist in Sydney. After a prosperous career he sold his business for, it was said, £14,000, and judiciously invested this sum in buildings and other pursuits of profit. For nearly two years he occupied the house opposite to mine in Sydney, which gave me almost daily opportunity then of seeing him. He struck me as being a remarkably well-conducted person. He had once been a member of the Society of Friends; he wore a broad-brimmed hat, appeared always in a neat and carefully adjusted costume, and his whole appearance and manner impressed one with the notion of his being a very saintly personage. He always sought the society in public of persons of reputed piety. I have often met him in the street accompanied by a secretary or collector to a charitable institution, whom he assisted in obtaining contributions for benevolent objects. At one time he took up the cause of temperance in such an intemperate and silly spirit, that he ordered a puncheon of rum he had imported to be staved on the wharf at Sydney, and its contents poured into the sea, saying that, ‘he would not be instrumental to the guilt of disseminating such poison throughout the colony.’ At another time his zeal took an apparently religious turn. He built, in Macquarie Street, Sydney, a commodious meeting-house for the Society of Friends, on the front of which was inscribed on a large square stone inserted in the wall some such words as these—

JOHN TAWELL TO THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.

He conveyed no title, however, to the Society to secure them the tenure of the property. After his execution it was sold, I understood, with other portions of his property, for the benefit of the party entitled to it under his will, the Crown having waived its right to the forfeiture of the estate.

“Tawell was himself a liberal contributor to charities, and the opinion of his character was so favourable, that the act for which he suffered created great astonishment in Sydney. A considerable part of his money had been realised by buying up all the whalebone that trading vessels, at an early period, imported into Sydney. This he sent to a London house, where it was manufactured into combs, handles for brushes, and various other articles of domestic use. He was the first person in the colony who converted whalebone into an article of profitable export. When he left the colony, he had a considerable property from rents and other sources which became much reduced by the general distress that prevailed in New South Wales in 1843.” Hence the anxiety expressed by him for his Sydney letters, referred to in the course of his trial. Still, however, a man of good means, occupying a respected position in his town, and noted, through a long and industrious life, for his benevolence and straightforward conduct in his relations with his neighbours, he might well say when first charged with the murder of his mistress, “My station in society places me beyond suspicion.” Such had been the remarkable career, and such was the ostensible character of the man to whom the most cold-blooded of murders was clearly brought home in the following trial.”

At the trial before Mr. Baron Parke, at Aylesbury, on the 12th, 13th, and 14th of March, 1845, Sergeant Byles and Mr. Prendergast appeared for the prosecution, and Mr. Fitzroy Kelly, Q.C., Mr. Gunning, and Mr. O’Malley, assisted by Messrs. Herapath, of Bristol, Professor Graham and Dr. Letheby, of London, the eminent chemists, for the defence.

In consequence of the excitement in the county caused by the event, numerous objections were taken to jurymen by the prisoner’s counsel. At length, however, a jury was formed, and after a brief recapitulation of the leading facts of the proposed evidence by Sergeant Byles, Mary Ashley, a next door neighbour of the deceased, was called, who had seen Tawell go to Sarah Hart’s between 4 and 5 in the afternoon of the 1st of January, and between 6 and 7 the same evening, “hearing a sort of stifled scream,” had gone to her door with a candle and seen him leaving the cottage. The cottages stood in a row, with small gardens in front, with rails and gates, and contained four rooms, two on the ground floor, and the same number above.

“The prisoner,” said the witness, “appeared to be agitated, and unable to open the gate. I opened it for him; it was fastened with a small button. When I went out of my house, I said, ‘I am afraid my neighbour is ill’—not speaking to any person in particular, but as the prisoner was then coming down the garden I should think that I spoke loud enough for him to hear me: I was about six yards from him. No reply was made by him. When I got to the gate I could hear Mrs. Hart still making the same description of noise: the prisoner made me no answer when I asked him if I should open the gate; he appeared very much agitated, and was trying in a hurried manner to open the gate; he came out of the gate before I went in; I saw his face; I held the candle over the gate to open it: I have no doubt that he is the same man, though I had never seen him before that afternoon. In the afternoon Mrs. Hart said to me, ‘I expect my old master, but perhaps he will not come till to-morrow.’ When I got to Mrs. Hart’s door it was shut, and upon my opening it I saw Mrs. Hart lying on the floor with her head not a great way from the door; her legs were towards the fire, her dress was quite in a disordered state, her petticoats nearly up to her knees, her left stocking down to her ankle, and torn, and her left shoe off: her cap was off, and her hair hanging down over her head: her cap was a little distance from her: she was still making a noise, and her eyes were fixed, but her lips moving. I took hold of her hands and raised her head, and said, ‘Oh, Mrs. Hart, what is the matter?’ She did not make any answer, but I thought she seemed to press my hand, but I could not positively tell. I then raised her up, and a little froth came out of her mouth, and I thought she was dying. I laid her down again, and took my candle and went into Mrs. Wheeler’s house, next door but one. When I went into Mrs. Hart’s I observed a bottle and a glass by the side of it half full, and another glass on the opposite side of the table, near the door, empty; but there appeared to be something in the bottom of it. A chair was beside Mrs. Hart, and another opposite her. I returned from Mrs. Wheeler’s with Mrs. Barrett, and we placed a pillow on the child’s chair and bathed her temples. One of Mrs. Barrett’s apprentices went for Dr. Champneys, and he came. I searched the place immediately, and found no small vial about the size of a thimble. There was a middling fire in the house. Before I got into the house I thought the prisoner was looking, and I locked the door, because I was frightened. The deceased was breathing hard in a short way, and making a noise like ‘oh! oh!’ and her eyes looked very full.”

On cross-examination by Mr. Kelly, she said—

“That she heard Mrs. Hart’s voice rather loud after Mr. Tawell went in—only a few words, but could not hear what she said. She did not think that they were quarrelling, but that perhaps Mrs. Hart was in hysterics, as money matters were always talked over when Tawell came. When Mr. Champneys came in, he said he must try to bleed her: he did so, and there was about as much blood as would cover a plate; she died immediately afterwards; indeed, I think she was dead when he bled her. About Christmas Mrs. Hart received a basket of apples as a present—about a peck, some of which were left in a box.”

On re-examination, she said—

“That it was not more than a minute after she left her own house that she entered Mrs. Hart’s, and that she saw about ten or a dozen apples in the box after her death.”

Mrs. Barrett confirmed Mrs. Ashley’s account of the condition in which she found the deceased, but did not see any foam on her lips until after she tried to pour some water down her throat.[8]

It was then proved by the barmaid at the “Windmill,” on Salthill, and a gardener, that about half after six on that day the deceased came there for a bottle of Guinness’s stout, and that she was met between her house and the “Windmill” about the same time in high spirits running towards her cottage.

The next witness spoke to the acts of the prisoner before he arrived at the cottage. At three o’clock in the afternoon he had been at the Jerusalem Coffee-house, inquiring at what hour they closed, saying he was going to the West End, and should not be back until half-past eight, and wishing to leave a greatcoat and a parcel, which, by arrangement with the waiter, he fetched away about half-past nine or a quarter to ten that night, leaving his umbrella there. Other witnesses proved his being seen running from Bath Place towards Slough, getting into the Eton omnibus and stopping opposite Sir John Herschel’s house, then returning towards the Slough station and leaving it for Paddington by the half-past eight train.[9] The evidence of the next witness, who tracked him from the moment of his arrival at Paddington, must be given in detail.

William Williams said—

“I am a sergeant of police on the Great Western Railway, at Paddington Station. On the 1st of January, in consequence of a telegraphic communication, I observed the prisoner get out of a carriage and get into a New Road omnibus. I put on a private coat, and acted as guard. He got out opposite Princes’ Street, near the Bank, about a quarter past nine. I opened the door on purpose to look at him; he went towards the Wellington Statue, and then crossed over to Birch’s, the pastrycooks: he stood a moment, as if he was considering; I watched him from behind the statue. He then went towards the Jerusalem Coffee-house, and I followed him; he then went down a court into Birchin Lane, and from thence to Scott’s Yard, in the Borough, where he lodged, where I left him. On returning there next morning he was gone, so I went to the Jerusalem, and an officer (Wiggins) went in and took him into custody. Wiggins said to him that he was last seen in the house of a woman at Slough who was found dead, when he replied that, ‘I was not at Slough yesterday—I know no one there.’ I then remarked that I had seen him get off the train from Slough, and that he had given me sixpence after riding in the omnibus from the Paddington station. ‘You must be mistaken,’ he replied; ‘my station in life must rebut any suspicion that might be attached to me.’”

Wiggins, an inspector of the Metropolitan police, gave a graphic account of the arrest.

“On Thursday, the 2nd of January, I went into the Jerusalem Coffee-house with the last witness, and asked the prisoner if his name was Tawell; he said, ‘Yes.’ I then asked him if he had been at Slough last night, and he said, ‘No, I did not leave town all day yesterday.’ I then opened my coat, showed my uniform, and said, ‘I want you concerning the woman you were with last night.’ He said, ‘I don’t know anyone there.’ I said, ‘There was a woman found dead there, and you are supposed to be the last person who was seen with her alive.’ He said, ‘Thee must be mistaken in the identity, my station in society places me beyond suspicion.’ I then took him down to Salt Hill, to the ‘Three Tuns,’ where the inquest was being held. I searched him, and found £12. 10_s._ in gold and £1. 1_s._ 6_d._ in silver, a gold watch, and a letter addressed to him, which he said he had received from his wife. On the second day of the inquest I saw him again. After consulting with his lawyer, he said to me, ‘I took thee for a gentleman in the railway carriage.’ I said, ‘I told you I was an officer.’ He replied, ‘Yes, but that was afterwards.’ The first day of the inquest he said, ‘Mind, I have disclosed nothing.’”

In cross-examination, Mr. Kelly failed to get the witness to say that when asked about Slough the prisoner said he came from Berkhampstead, and only led the witness to reiterate that he stated “that he had not been at Slough that day.”

To Perkins, the inspector of the Eton police, Tawell was dangerously communicative.

“On the day after I had taken him into custody,” said this witness, “and brought him to my own house, after he had seen his lawyer, he said to me, ‘The unfortunate woman once lived in my service, about two years and a half, or nearly so.’ He asked me if I knew this. I told him I had heard so. Then Holmes, the other constable, came in, and he added, ‘She left my service about five years ago.’ I told him whatever he said I should communicate to the coroner to-morrow. He said, ‘he would have no objection to that,’ and then continued, ‘she had been in the habit of writing letters to him for money,’ and that he had been pestered with her; she was a very good servant when in his service, but a bad principled woman. She wrote to him that if he did not send her something she would make away with herself. He came down to her house and told her that he would not give her any more money. She then asked him if he would not give her some porter. I then sent for a bottle of stout, and she had a glass and I had a glass. She then took out a small phial, about the size of a thimble, and said, “I will, I will,” and poured some into her glass and drank a part of it—the remainder was thrown into the fire. She then done herself about and laid down on the hearth-rug; I then went out. I did not think she was in earnest, otherwise I would have called somebody.’ I asked him if he had got those letters, and he said, ‘No, I never keep such letters as those.’ I knew him by person, having seen him at Aylesbury.”

The cross-examination was unimportant—mainly directed to the probable inaccuracy of his recollection and to the nature of the communication he made to the coroner. Holmes, in addition to confirming Perkins’ report of the prisoner’s statement, was present when Mrs. Tawell visited her husband, when, in reply to her question, “what he had been doing,” he replied, “Nothing. I hope you will forgive me.”

MEDICAL EVIDENCE.

H. Montague Champneys, surgeon at Salthill, sent for a few minutes before 7 P.M. on January 1st, said—

“I ran, and when I got there saw deceased on the floor, felt her pulse, but am not certain whether I felt any pulsation. I put my hand under her clothes over her heart, and could not discover any pulsation; considered her dead, but still thought it best to open a vein in her arm, and obtained about an ounce of blood. Next day I made a post mortem examination with Mr. Norblad and Mr. Pickering. Having previously examined the external parts, we opened the body, when I smelt the odour of prussic acid; the lungs were perfectly healthy, but the coverings had the appearance of inflammation. Examined stomach and contents. Rather more mucus than there ought to be; the abdominal viscera perfectly healthy. Put contents of stomach into a bottle, which I, with Messrs. Norblad and Pickering, took to Mr. Cooper, in London. The contents were tested for sulphuric acid, oxalic acid, and some poisonous salts, but nothing was discovered; afterwards an experiment was tried for prussic acid. Mr. Cooper tried protosulphate of iron, and also nitrate of silver, but could not during the experiment discover any prussic acid; but nevertheless, it is my opinion that she died from the effects of that poison. On the following Sunday I took the beer and the part of a bun found on the table to Mr. Cooper, which were tested for prussic acid, but none discovered. When I stated that in my opinion the deceased died from the effects of prussic acid I did not know that the prisoner had bought any. I know Scheele’s prussic acid and that of the London Pharmacopœia; less than a grain of pure prussic acid would be a dose; two drams of Scheele’s would contain six grains. There are cases on record where the smell of prussic acid could not be discovered in the stomach of a person who had taken it. A person in Paris died from taking seven-tenths of a grain. Prussic acid is volatile, and may be carried off by the lungs or absorbed by the tissues. There is a case in the Lancet of a person dying from having less than a grain administered to her. After this occurrence I put thirty grains of Scheele’s acid into a glass of Guinness’s stout, and the smell was scarcely perceptible. The symptoms would come on in less than two minutes.”

In the very minute and detailed cross-examination to which this witness was subjected by Mr. Kelly, he made the following statements:—

“I have no experience in detecting the odour of prussic acid in a human subject—should think it may be taken without detection; should expect to find the odour in the mouth and in the breath, but there may be exceptions. Neither Mr. Pickering nor Mr. Norblad smelt it when the body was opened. It was not a conjecture of mine; I was positive of it. The smell is very peculiar and strong, and easy to be detected by those acquainted with it. It is more likely to be detected when exposed as this was to a heat of 212 degrees. At every heat we tried to smell it, but failed. There was no such smell in the blood which I drew shortly after death. I am not competent to say whether epileptic patients die more quickly from prussic acid than others. It is said to act powerfully on the nervous system. Have read the case of the seven epileptic patients who died from a dose of seven-tenths of a grain each in from thirty to forty-five hours. There was a case in which the French doctors discovered poison eight days after death.

“This acid exists in a great number of substances, in apples for instance, and probably in many other substances in which it has never been discovered. I agree with Dr. Christisön in his opinion (p. 756) in respect of the formation of this acid in various organic substances and other articles. It is made from the blood, bones, and horns of animals. It consists of 12 carbon, 14 nitrogen, and 1 hydrogen. Those are its elements. They exist and can be obtained in great quantities from various substances—cherry-stones, and stones of various fruits; they are found in the human saliva, but not in the form of prussic acid. It (the salt) is called sulphocyanide, and when taken is perceptible in the blood and breath, but most in the stomach.[10] In apple-pips or other substances the smell would not be given off until disengaged by some process for that purpose.

“During the experiments for oxalic acid and other poisons, Messrs. Cooper, Pickering, and Norblad failed to perceive any smell. One of them then came to the conclusion that there must be prussic acid.”

Question.—“Did Mr. Cooper then apply a process which would set free prussic acid from apple-pips and other substances?”

Answer.—“I believe that is the process, but it was not carried to the full extent. I refer to the heat. When this new process was applied, the result was that prussic acid was found. I did not smell it, nor anyone else. Beyond the smell in opening the body, I smelt none at all.”

“When I first saw the deceased I thought I felt a few beats of the pulse, but I imagine that I was mistaken. It might have been the pulse in my own finger. The analogy between animals and human beings dying of prussic acid is considered doubtful by the best authorities. The heart would continue to beat for a short time after the pulse had receded from the arms. The lungs might be considered slightly congested.”

Mr. Kelly.—“Why then inform my learned friend that they were sound and healthy?”

Witness.—“The lungs themselves were not diseased.”

Mr. Kelly.—“Is it natural and healthy when the lungs are congested?”

Witness.—“They contained rather more blood than usual.”

Mr. Kelly.—“Is that a healthy state?”

Witness.—“Not perfectly so.”

Mr. Kelly.—“Is not congested lungs the cause of various modes of sudden death?”

Witness.—“Yes.”

“I then examined the pericardium, it was empty. The heart had a natural appearance. I do not recollect that I examined the arteries proceeding from the aorta. Any disease of the coronary arteries is likely to cause sudden death. I did not examine the spinal marrow. The valves of the heart were very clear. Death might suddenly result from the adhesion of the spinal marrow, if it had existed some time. A sudden termination also might take place where the disease is latent. I looked at the gall-bladder, the colour was natural. My experience teaches me that prussic acid would colour it blue.[11] I examined the œsophagus to see if there was any foreign substance, and found none. I opened the trachea, but not the bronchial tubes, so I could not tell whether there was water in them or not. When I felt the pulse and heart of the deceased I was satisfied that she was dead, still I bled her, as I thought it best to try every means to restore animation. I did not do it to ascertain the cause of death. I then got no information as to the cause of death. I saw a slight motion of the jaw as I felt the pulse, and apprehend she died then. I took the stomach from the body eighteen hours after death. The contents were turned into a jug or basin, and afterwards into a bottle. I do not know for what purpose the bottle had been used. I did not wash it out.” (The bottle was here produced, a large-mouthed one, like a pickle bottle.) The witness then stated what care he took of it to prevent its being tampered with before taking it to Mr. Cooper:—“The exact dose to cause death is still undetermined, also whether the effect is cumulative or not, also the effect of the same quantity diluted more or less is unsettled. Scheele’s prussic acid varies in strength. Prussic acid evaporates by keeping.”

Mr. Kelly, reading from Watson’s “Lectures on Physic.”—“Do you agree to this—‘A blow, a fall, an electric shock, a teaspoonful of prussic acid, may cause death and leave no trace on the nervous system?’”

Witness.—“Yes.”

On his re-examination by Serjt. Byles, the witness said:—

“In the case of the seven epileptic patients two medical men did not smell the acid, but two chemists did some time afterwards. It requires an extensive experience readily to detect the smell. Some may perceive it, some not. Several persons should smell, some not being so susceptible of the odour as others. I agree with a French chemist that ‘under a considerable number of circumstances there must be great practical knowledge to detect smell.’ If a person once knows the smell, I think he will know it again.”[12]

“I should think that before prussic acid could be obtained from horns, blood, and bones of animals, a heat of from 400 to 500 degrees would be necessary. All animals, whether human or not, die if they take prussic acid. There is no difference in its operation upon man and the inferior animals. There was no appearance of disease in the heart of the deceased. Had there been any rupture of the coronary arteries it would have been apparent. I never knew such a disease of the spinal marrow to cause sudden death. I know only of the two cases mentioned by Taylor of the gall bladder having a blue tint. The absence of it is no proof that the person did not die from prussic acid. The bottle into which I put the contents was perfectly clean and dry. The ends of the stomach were securely tied up with string when I moved the contents into the jug, which was also perfectly dry and clean. I have no doubt the deceased died from prussic acid.”

After two constables (Hill and Larkin) had proved the finding of a phial in a cupboard and two others in a jug, one of which contained hartshorn, the case was adjourned to the following morning.

* * * * *

SECOND DAY. Thursday, MARCH 13.

* * * * *

SUPPOSED PREVIOUS ATTEMPT TO POISON.

Charlotte Howard, unmarried, a servant, said:—

“I knew Mrs. Hart, and went to see her at Salthill on the 26th September, 1843. She had a child of mine in her care. I was there from three to four months, in which time I saw Mr. Tawell there twice. On the 30th of September he came, and in ten minutes after, Mrs. Hart sent me out for a bottle of stout, which I got and gave to her. She took it into the room where he was. Shortly after she came out and sent me for a sheet of paper, leaving Mr. Tawell in the room with the stout. When I came back she said to me ‘I am so ill, I shall be obliged to tell my master to go; I am so sick, my head is so bad.’ She was very sick, and I helped her upstairs to bed. After she got upstairs she was sick again. She was in very good health when Tawell came. She said she only drank one glass of porter and felt sick directly afterwards. I went down again and saw eighteen sovereigns on the table, which I put into a drawer. There was some porter in the glasses and in the bottle. That in the glasses I threw away, and drank that in the bottle, and it did not make me ill. Mrs. Hart complained of being very giddy, but did not say anything about her throat.”

ANALYTICAL EVIDENCE.

Mr. Cooper, the Analytical Chemist and Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, was then called and examined by Serjeant Byles.

“On the 3rd of January,” said the witness, “Messrs. Champneys, Norblad, and Pickering called on me with a carpet bag. The bag contained a bottle (ordinary one, such as olives are usually sold in) full or nearly so with the contents of the stomach; a portion of porter in an ordinary beer-bottle, on which was a paper label signifying that it contained Guinness’s beer; a glass tumbler, about half full of what appeared to be a mixture of beer and water; a part of a plum bun, and a phial containing a few drops (perhaps about half a drachm) of a nearly colourless fluid; a small piece of pink paper, such as is generally used by apothecaries for tying over the corks of medicine phials, and had apparently been used for such purpose; and the stomach and part of the intestines. The bottle which contained the contents of the stomach was tied over with a piece of bladder, and, I think, corked as well, but of the latter I am not certain; it was opened and smelt strongly of food in the progress of digestion, it had also the smell of beer. On the application of litmus paper to the surface of the contents it became red instantly, and so very red that I was disposed to consider that Mr. Norblad and the other gentlemen were right in their conjecture as to its containing oxalic acid. A portion was now taken out of this bottle and put into a porcelain evaporating basin, to which some distilled water was added, and stirred well together with a glass rod; the basin with its contents was then placed on the heated sand bath and kept stirring until it boiled, and even after it had boiled for some minutes. During the whole of this operation I was standing over it, and the vapour that escaped I smelt the whole time, but did not recognise the slightest odour of prussic acid; the odour was the same as that of the contents of the bottle, but it was more powerful. The contents of the basin were then put into a paper filter placed in a glass funnel, and that which passed through the filter was collected in a glass vessel placed for its reception. While this operation was going on I directed my attention to the contents of the beer bottle and the tumbler. I found them both to have an acid reaction on litmus paper, the contents of the beer bottle very decidedly so; but on the application of the usual tests employed for the detection of oxalic acid, not a trace of it could be found.

“By this time a small quantity of clear liquid from the contents of the basin had passed the filter; this was removed from the glass vessel employed to receive it into a test glass, and on the application of the tests for the detection of oxalic acid not the smallest trace was indicated. I then felt quite certain that oxalic acid had not been the cause of death.

“I was then shown the stomach by Messrs. Champneys and Norblad, and on examining its interior surface it did not appear to have been acted on by any corrosive substance: nevertheless I thought it advisable to search for sulphuric acid, and accordingly applied to a small portion of the liquid, filtered from that which had been boiled, the test for that substance, but none could be detected. In like manner I did also apply the tests for the detection of baryta, opium, arsenic, the salts of mercury, and other metallic poisons, and could find none of them. I then came to the conclusion that, if the person had died from the effect of poison, it could be no other than prussic acid.

“A portion of the contents of the stomach was then taken from the bottle and put into a tubulated retort, to which was added a very small quantity of dilute sulphuric acid; the retort with its contents was placed on the sand bath, a receiver applied and a portion distilled off. When about two drachms of clear liquid had distilled over, it was removed from the receiver into a test glass, about a grain of green sulphate of iron was added, and when this was dissolved, a small quantity of solution of potassa. These were allowed to remain a short time together and stirred with a glass rod. Subsequently muriatic acid was added in sufficient quantity when instantly Prussian blue appeared, which could not have resulted unless cyanogen or hydrocyanic acid had been present. But it could not be recognised by the smell. Although I had no doubt in my own mind, from the gentle heat that had been employed in the above detailed process of distillation, that the prussic acid could not have resulted from any decomposition of the animal matters present in the contents of the stomach, yet I thought it prudent to conduct the process of distillation in such a manner as to preclude the possibility of such occurrence.

“Another and much larger portion of the contents of the stomach was put into another retort, to which a little dilute sulphuric acid was added as before, and the retort with its contents placed in a water bath, to which some common salt was added. The salt-water bath was heated until it boiled; a receiver was put on to the retort, an adapter intervening so as to remove the receiver to a greater distance from the furnace, and the receiver was kept as cool as possible by folds of blotting paper kept constantly wet applied to its external surface. In this manner was the distillation slowly conducted, until about an ounce of clear liquid had distilled over.”

On the removal of this liquid from the receiver it had the same smell as that contained in the bottle had before distillation, and neither myself, Mr. Norblad, Mr. Champneys, nor my son could detect the smell of prussic acid in the slightest degree. In fact the odour of beer and digesting food was so powerful as to cover or disguise the smell of the prussic acid in this weak state, but on applying the same tests as before Prussian blue was found in considerable quantity.

“The few drops of liquid which were in the phial before mentioned were now examined: they had no action on litmus paper, they smelt of camphor and acetate of ammonia. The test for prussic acid was applied, but it did not show the smallest quantity. The phial was then washed out, and the distilled liquid, with the precipitated Prussian blue obtained by the two above-detailed processes was put into it. It was corked up and taken by Messrs. Norblad and Champneys to keep in their possession. I also added the same test to distilled water containing a few drops of prussic acid, for the sake of comparison and to try the test. This was also taken by Messrs. Norblad and Champneys, as was also some distilled water with the same tests applied, to which no prussic acid had been added, and which was colourless. As far as I can recollect this completed the first day’s proceedings, it being now nearly dark.

“On the evening of the following day (Saturday) Mr. Pickering came to me to request I would on the Monday following examine, by the coroner’s desire, the contents of the glass tumbler, the beer bottle, and the remainder of the beer, to determine if prussic acid existed in any of them. On Sunday the 6th, being engaged at Derby on the Monday, Messrs. Norblad and Champneys came, bringing with them the whole of the things they took away with them on the Friday. The beer, the contents of the tumbler, and the remains of the plum bun we each subjected separately to distillation in the salt-water bath, and to the liquor obtained by distillation the same tests for detecting prussic acid were added, but not a trace could be found.

“I may here observe that, on the intervening Saturday, I continued the distillation of the larger portion before spoken of for the purpose of obtaining more of the distilled liquid, and in fact to continue the distillation until the whole of the prussic acid had been separated. A part of the distilled liquor had its Prussian blue precipitated, which was given to Messrs. Norblad and Champneys on the Sunday, and to another part I added nitrate of silver for the purpose of separating the hydrocyanic acid, or rather the cyanogen it contained. I kept it safe from decomposition or change during my absence, and for the purpose of further experiments on my return, and at my leisure.

“Accordingly, shortly after my return, I put the cyanide of silver obtained by the above process, together with some very dilute muriatic acid, into a small retort, to which a receiver was attached. The retort was placed over a lamp in order to be heated, and the receiver was surrounded by cold water. The distillation proceeded until about a drachm and a half had distilled over. This liquor possessed the odour of prussic acid, distinctly recognised by myself, and also by two of my sons.

“It occurred to me that as Messrs. Norblad, Champneys, and myself had distinctly seen among the contents of the stomach some undigested apples, that the seeds or pips of the apple might give rise to the formation of prussic acid by distillation. I therefore determined on making an experiment to see if any and what quantity of prussic acid they were capable of producing. Accordingly the seeds from fifteen apples were bruised and put into a retort with some distilled water, and about an ounce of liquor was distilled off. On the application of the tests before spoken of, Prussian blue, in exceeding small quantity, was produced. On testing the last product of distillation, no Prussian blue was found. I have the whole of the Prussian blue thus produced.

“About ten days ago I was applied to and requested to make more experiments for the purpose (if possible) of discovering the whole amount of prussic acid originally contained in the contents of the stomach, or at least of that portion brought to me. I stated that I had not the means in my possession of doing so, and that Mr. Norblad or Mr. Champneys possessed almost everything relating to the matter; but I thought it possible, if I had the remainder of the contents of the stomach, and that if it were contained in the same bottle in which it was originally brought, I might be able to do so—having a distinct recollection of about the height at which the matter stood in the neck of the bottle. Mr. Champneys, on Saturday, the 8th of February, delivered, with other matters, into my charge, the remainder of the contents of the stomach which had not before been subjected to any operation or experiment, and which, when I gave it him back, after my former experiments, I requested him to keep in a cool dark place for further investigation, should it be deemed requisite. The bottle was tightly corked and securely tied over with a piece of bladder. Before uncorking it, I made a mark with a file outside the bottle coincident with the surface of the contents in the interior. I then emptied the contents into a glass alembic, washed the bottle out with a little distilled water, and added this to the matter in the alembic. The head of the alembic was then put on, a condensing apparatus attached, the alembic placed as before on a salt-water bath, the bath brought to the boiling point, and distillation conducted until the whole of the prussic acid was expelled. A solution of nitrate of silver was put into the recipient for the purpose of seizing hold of the hydrocyanic acid the moment it reached that vessel. By this process I succeeded in obtaining 1·455 grains of dry cyanide of silver, very slightly contaminated with chloride of silver. The latter did not amount to a quantity which could be collected and weighed. But if I allow 0·025 grains, and call the quantity of cyanide of silver produced in reality 1·43 on the quantity operated on in this instance, it must be very near the truth. But as the quantity operated on in this instance formed only 51 parts out of the 180 of the whole volume of the contents of the bottle as it was first brought to me, the following proportion will show how much was contained in the whole. For if 51 parts give 1·43 grains of cyanide of silver, 180 parts will give 5·047 grains of cyanide of silver. This quantity of cyanide of silver is equivalent to 1·002 grains of real hydrocyanic or prussic acid, which is equal to 50 grains of the prussic acid of the strength of the London Pharmacopeia. The determination of the relative quantity operated on, and the original volume of the contents of the stomach, was ascertained by measuring, with water, the bottle filled, as near as possible to remember, to that part in the neck where the contents originally stood, which was 180½ drachms, and to the mark made by the file 51½ drachms.

“I may also remark that the contents of the stomach, after distillation, was still strongly acid, occasioned most probably by the acid in the beer, and also by the acid which is invariably produced during the process of digestion.”[13]

During his examination, Mr. Cooper produced the bottles containing the Prussian blue produced from the stomach and from the apple-pips—the former dark blue in colour, the latter hardly more than tinged with it. When placed side by side on the front of the witness-box the marked contrast caused much excitement in Court.

The cross-examination of this witness by Mr. Kelly was so important, that though very lengthy it is necessary to give it in considerable detail.

“Until this case,” said the witness, “I had never examined the contents of a human stomach where a person had been killed by prussic acid, or a human stomach containing prussic acid. Respecting the effect of prussic acid on the stomach and tissues of the body, my knowledge is only theoretical. Prussic acid, which I have smelt from its most concentrated to its weakest state, has a peculiar smell; it affects different persons differently. When I smell it, it affects spasmodically the back of the throat. But it loses its smell in combinations. I am not aware what quantity of prussic acid destroys life. I have no practical knowledge on the subject. The case I am most familiar with is that of the seven epileptics.

“I began my investigation with the view of seeing if oxalic acid was present. I recognised the odour of beer more strongly in the contents of the stomach than anything else. I did not trace the smell of prussic acid in them, nor feel any spasmodic affection in the throat in smelling them. I did not come to the conclusion, after trying for those acids and mercurial poisons, which I did not discover, that there was prussic acid in the stomach, but I remarked to those present at that time, ‘Well, if this person has taken poison, it must be prussic acid.’

“I have no idea how much Prussian blue I obtained from the first experiment, as it was made in a hurry. (The bottle of dark blue liquid was here shown again.) I thought the obtaining evidence of its presence sufficient. I got more Prussian blue in the second experiment than in the first, and more in the third experiment than the second. I have not calculated the total amount of Prussian blue in the bottle.”

As to the contents of the stomach: “There was undigested flesh and a pulpy mass of which I could make nothing, and some portion of apple, but no pips either partially digested or undigested with the apple. I am not prepared to say that the pips of this apple contained more prussic acid than others. There is a great difference between bitter and sweet apples—the bitter contain a great deal of prussic acid, the sweet, I believe, none.”[14]

As to prussic acid being in many substances: “Strictly speaking, I don’t think it exists in any substance, not even in bitter almonds. I mean in a free state; it is so extremely volatile that it cannot possibly exist unless in combination with some other substance. It is my opinion that prussic acid is a ‘product,’ and not an ‘educt’—that is to say, in consequence of its great volatility it cannot exist unless in combination with some other substance; you liberate it by combination and change. The elements of it exist in a great many substances. These elements, on taking new arrangements, may produce prussic acid. Therefore I feel that it is always a ‘product,’ and that it does not exist in any substance in a free state, because if it did it would be continually evaporating from that substance.”

Question.—“Are not the substances which are already known to contain the elements of prussic acid, and from which it can be obtained, very numerous?”

Answer.—“They are very numerous certainly, because all those compounds which contain carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, may, in my opinion, by new changes be made to produce prussic acid. All animal substances of any kind contain those elements, in which are contained the elements of prussic acid. I agree, as far as I know, with Christison, that the distilled seeds of bitter almonds, and pomaceous seeds, yield prussic acid by distillation.”

Question.—“Is it not found, from time to time, by accident or experiment, to exist in organic and other matters?”

Answer.—“I believe it is. I was the first person to discover it in fulminating silver, and perhaps also in apple-pips, from recent experiments. I am not aware of it ever having been produced by mere organic changes in the stomach. If the apple-pips on which I operated had been macerated, I cannot say that I should have obtained more Prussian blue. I know it is the habit to macerate bitter almonds, but I also know that without maceration they have sometimes yielded more prussic acid than with maceration.”

Question.—“I will ask you one question more, ‘Do you agree with Dr. Taylor that the odour of prussic acid, which is said to be peculiar, may be found when all tests fail?”

Answer.—“I do not believe it. As far as my experience goes, it would lead me to the contrary conclusion.”

Question.—“But if I understand you rightly, you do not smell prussic acid, but feel its effects in another way?”

Answer.—“Sometimes it has produced a spasmodic constriction about the throat, without my smelling it. At other times I have distinctly smelt it. It depends very much, I think, on the state of the nasal organ at the time.”

To Serjeant Byles.—“The same peculiar action at the back of the throat is, I think, felt by others on putting prussic acid to the nose. I communicated the nature of my evidence to the solicitor of the prisoner about a month ago.”

Baron Parke.—“Have you or have you not a doubt upon your mind from the result of your experiments as to the existence of prussic acid in the stomach?”

Witness.—“None whatever! I have no doubt that prussic acid may exist without being smelt.”

Baron Parke.—“If there was an absence of smell, would you suppose that the prussic acid was present in the shape of a salt, and that, therefore, you did not smell it?”

Witness.—“Absence of smell may arise from dilution, or from its being covered by the smell of other substances.”

Baron Parke.—“Do you, in this particular case, ascribe the absence of smell to the circumstance of the prussic acid being in the form of a salt?”

Witness.—“No, because it could not exist in the stomach as a cyanide of potassium, which is a salt, or as a cyanide of soda, when another and more powerful acid was present; as, for instance, muriatic acid, which in this case was found in considerable quantity, it being an acid generated by the process of digestion.”

Baron Parke.—“Do you not believe that there was also acetic acid present. Is not that a strong acid?”

Witness.—“I have no doubt there was also acetic acid present, and it would have a greater affinity for soda or potash than prussic acid. I think prussic acid cannot be formed by putrefaction in the stomach.”

Mr. Joseph Cooper, a son of the last witness, and his assistant for four years, deposed to having smelt the ordinary prussic acid at the time in the process, mentioned by his father.

Mr. Norblad, surgeon and apothecary at Slough for 10 years, said:

“On January 2 I went to Mrs. Hart’s house and saw her body; have heard the evidence of Mr. Champneys, and should say that death was caused by prussic or oxalic acid; do not know of any other poisons that would produce death so rapidly; was present at Mr. Cooper’s experiments; have heard and perfectly agree with his evidence; oxalic acid must have been detected if present; I am quite of opinion that prussic acid was present in the stomach, and have no doubt about it; have heard the evidence of the witness Howard, the symptoms she describes (of supposed former attempt) are precisely those of prussic acid. That acid acts uniformly upon all animal subjects, and destroys life in the same way in all cases. Have tried experiments on dogs, and have seen cats and dogs poisoned by that acid. On the 18th February I made an experiment on two dogs. Five hours after feeding them I gave one of them half an ounce and the other one drachm of Scheele’s acid, administered it at 7 p.m., and exactly in ten seconds after receiving the smaller dose the dog fell as if dead, and the other in half the time; I opened their bodies eighteen hours after and could not discover any odour; I smelt the mouth of the dog and could not detect it then, nor at any other time; I opened the stomach of the dog, which smelt intensely of sour beer, the acid having been administered in beer. I attributed the absence of smell to the admixture of Guinness’s stout; I should have expected on opening Mrs. Hart’s body to have discovered the cause of death.”

By the Court.—“I examined the brain; it was perfectly healthy; death did not arise from apoplexy.”

By Serjeant Byles.—“Less than a grain of pure prussic acid would be sufficient to produce death.”

Cross-examined by Mr. Kelly:—

“I have never attended any one who had taken prussic acid except in the form of medicine. The average dose of Scheele’s is five minims, and a minim is about a grain. Never heard of prussic acid being administered externally for varicose veins, and should think it useless (prescription handed to him). That is a proper prescription for varicose veins. I agree with Dr. Thompson, of London, that prussic acid may be applied successfully to diseases of the skin and cancerous affections to alleviate pain. I consider my sense of smell very acute. I mixed twelve grains of prussic acid with a pint of porter, but could not smell it. Some porter dropped on the table and I did then smell it. I know that prussic acid when combined with the blood of an animal volatilises very rapidly when exposed to the air. There is a case in which prussic acid appears to have allayed irritation of the stomach; it is a useful medicine sometimes in small doses. I have seen dogs vomit after it. Disease of the heart would produce death from mental emotion or rupture of the coronaries of the heart. Forcing water down the throat of a person in a syncope might cause sudden death. There was no congestion or gorging of the lungs. I saw but did not examine specially the coronary arteries.”

Kelly.—“If sudden death had occurred from a disease of the coronary arteries, what would be the appearance of the lungs?”

Witness.—“The lungs have nothing to do with the coronary arteries; ossification of them is supposed to cause sudden death. The blood in the lungs would not be prevented from returning the heart so as to gorge the lungs. I did not see any symptoms of the coronary arteries being ossified.”

“I examined the lungs carefully. The lungs have been found gorged in some persons who have died of prussic acid. I don’t think that what has been called congestion was always clearly so. In all cases of paralysis of the heart, the blood has not been returned to the heart, and remaining in it gorges the lungs. Death by prussic acid paralyses the heart. In death from prussic acid, death is often denoted by an involuntary scream. I cannot say that I have heard of a succession of screams in any case of the kind. When I first saw the body, my impression was that death had been caused by oxalic acid, and that impression continued until the tests were applied. Blackness of the stomach is a symptom. There was a dark spot on the surface of the stomach. I have not seen a case of poisoning by oxalic acid.”

Re-examined by Mr. Prendergast.

“There was nothing in the stifled screams described by Mrs. Ashley yesterday at all inconsistent with poisoning by prussic acid; on the contrary, the catching of the breath is the last symptom. Less than one grain of prussic acid will kill a healthy person.”

By the Court.—“I saw nothing on the brain to indicate death by apoplexy. If a sudden emotion had caused death I don’t think I could have told that by the brain.”

Mr. Pickering, who had been in practice as a surgeon for nine years, and was present when Mr. Champneys made the first incision through the integuments, said he then smelt the odour of prussic acid,[15] and confirmed the accounts of the previous witnesses of the experiments in Mr. Cooper’s laboratory. On cross-examination he admitted that before they examined the body they were led to suppose that the death had been caused by poison, and that he had never seen a case of death from poisoning either by oxalic or prussic acid.

Previous visits of Tawell to Mrs. Hart, were proved by Kesiah Harding, a washerwoman at Slough, in December, 1844, and particularly on the Monday week before her death, when he told the deceased that he wished her to be alone when he next came, and that he would come on the Tuesday or Saturday week.

PURCHASE OF PRUSSIC ACID BY TAWELL.

This was proved by Henry Thomas, shopman to a Mr. Hughes, a chemist in Bishopsgate Street, who said,

“On the 1st of January, between twelve and two the prisoner came to the shop dressed in a great coat and usual quaker garb and asked for two drachms of Scheele’s Prussic Acid, bringing with him a ½oz. bottle with a regular label of Scheele’s Acid on it. As I could not get the stopper out, I gave it him in one of our own bottles. When about to put on a label, I believe the prisoner said “You need not,” but I would not swear it. He said he wanted it for an external application to varicose veins, paid 4_d._ for it, which was entered in the book now produced. Next day he came again between ten and two and asked for the same quantity, and, as he had broken our bottle, took it in the one he had originally brought. I had seen him frequently before and might have sold him prussic acid, but am not certain. He told me, three months before, that he had been a chemist and apothecary abroad. I do not remember his being in a hurry to catch the train and my being not able to get the stopper out. It is our practice to do it. We usually cover our bottles with leather. Attended at Aylesbury on the 13th of January, and recognised the prisoner the next morning in gaol.”

The cross-examination of this witness, who was evidently favourable to the prisoner and in communication with his solicitor, was directed to three points—the suitability of prussic acid to the disease in the legs from which the prisoner suffered; the effect of porter on the odour of prussic acid when mixed with it; and the amount that can be produced from apple-pips.

“The prisoner,” said the witness, “told me he was suffering from varicose veins. I judged that he was, from the medicine I sold him. He rubbed his leg. The prescription now shown me would be a good external application for the ulceration produced by varicose veins.”

Baron Parke.—“What is that?”

Kelly.—“Scheele’s Acid.”

Witness.—“That prescription is in the handwriting of Dr. Addison. I do not believe that Scheele’s Prussic Acid could be mixed with a drink and taken by a person and not smelt after death. I do not think porter would disguise it. I put about twenty drops of Scheele’s Prussic Acid down the throat of a parrot with a glass syringe. Three women were present, and the smell was so strong and suffocating, that it compelled them to leave the room. The bird was afterwards stuffed. I mixed thirty drops of this acid with eleven ounces of porter, and found the odour slightly perceptible. I did not perceive the difference when the froth was on and when there was none. It is the property of prussic acid to give out a smell when volatilising. Apple-pips contain prussic acid. I have assisted at the extracting it from fifteen small apples. The process was a soft-water bath, diluted sulphuric acid, and sulphate of iron. TWO GRAINS AND A QUARTER OF CYANIDE OF SILVER WERE PRODUCED. I did this under the direction of Dr. Lievesley, a lecturer at the London Hospital. In this process two sweet almonds were used.”[16]

On cross-examination by Serjeant Byles the witness admitted that he made this experiment on the 9th of March at the request of the Prisoner’s solicitor, and that he had never made this experiment before; that he had been with Mr. Hughes only about a year and half, and was paid £80 a year, and that Dr. Lievesley provided the London Pharmacopœia acid, and the porter. On being shown a leather or paper covering of a small bottle that had been found in the ashes of the grate in Mrs. Hart’s house, the witness declared that it could not be the covering of the bottle that he had put on, as it was too small for leather.

HISTORY OF MRS. HART.

Sarah Bateman said that she knew Mrs. Hart six years ago, when employed to nurse the Prisoner’s first wife, who soon after died. The witness at that time observed that Mrs. Hart—then known as Hadler—was with child, and the following statement was subsequently made by her when at tea with Tawell and the witness.

“I am in the family way, and will vindicate my master in it. He is going to be married to Sarah Catforth (the present wife), ‘and if it was to get abroad it would make a great difference to him.’ She seemed much excited, and Tawell begged her not to excite herself. ‘He was about to be admitted into the Society of Friends,’ he said, ‘and should not like these things to get abroad.’ She said, ‘He could marry Miss Catforth, and no one, not even her mother, should know what had become of her.’”

Mary Ann Moss, of Crawford Street, Bryanston Square, with whom Mrs. Hart came to lodge in 1841, when she was confined of a girl, remembered Tawell frequently visiting her, as Mrs. Hart said, “to bring her money from her husband.” From there she removed to a small house on Paddington Green for the sake of privacy, where Tawell paid regular visits, and eventually to Salt Hill, at Tawell’s desire. She represented to this witness that her husband was Tawell’s son, that Tawell disapproved of the marriage, and that the girl and a boy of whom she had been subsequently delivered were his. Mrs. Hart’s mother, Mrs. Hadler, also spoke to her having not heard of her for several years.

With the proof by a clerk of Barnet’s Bank that Tawell had drawn a cheque for £14 on the 1st of January, and the identification of certain letters being in his handwriting, the case for the prosecution was closed.

THE DEFENCE.

The nature of the defence opened by Mr. Fitzroy Kelly, in his long and eloquent address to the jury has already been indicated by his cross-examination of the medical witnesses, and was so fully commented on by the learned judge in his charge to the jury that it is needless to reprint it. On its conclusion residents at Berkhampstead who had known him for several years, testified to the good character which he had borne for kindness, charity, and benevolence, and a Mr. Richards, of Dover, and a Captain Dillon, who had both known him abroad—the latter for nearly thirty years—gave similar evidence of his kind, charitable, and hospitable disposition. On the conclusion of this evidence Baron Parke adjourned the Court to the next morning, when he gave the following exhaustive charge to the jury.

THE JUDGE’S CHARGE.

After the usual introductory caution to the Jury to be strictly impartial, Baron Parke said:—

“He would next tell them what the case was, and how it was to be proved. It was to be proved by circumstantial evidence—the only sort of evidence that could be obtained in most cases of a similar nature. The most atrocious crimes were committed in secret, but Providence had so ordered it that some traces were frequently left which were sufficient to lead to the discovery of the perpetrators. The law, therefore, wisely provided that direct proof of crime was not absolutely necessary; but on the other hand it was equally necessary that by circumstantial evidence the case should be so fully made out as to leave no rational doubt of its committal. He should, therefore, advise them to lay down the rule, that they should first consider what had been proved to their satisfaction, and then whether all those facts were consistent with the guilt of the prisoner. If they thought that they were consistent with his guilt—and there was nothing inconsistent with it except the prisoner’s previous character—then they should consider whether they were inconsistent with his innocence, and they should remember that the existence of the crime was not inconsistent with the other parts of the case. Whilst on this part of the case, he should observe that the counsel for the prisoner had admitted all those facts, but had asserted that the law required not only that those facts should be proved, but that it should be shown directly that the deceased had died from poison, and that a sufficient quantity of poison to cause death had been found in her stomach. That was not true of the law. It was not necessary to give direct and positive evidence in every step of the case. There was no difference between direct and circumstantial evidence, if the evidence was sufficient to satisfy their minds that death had ensued from poison. It was not necessary to prove what quantity of that poison was necessary to produce death by the testimony of the person who had actually seen death produced by it; nor was it necessary to prove that such a quantity as would destroy life was actually found in the body. If they were satisfied that the prisoner administered poison to the deceased, and that she died of it, it was not necessary to prove what quantity had been administered to her. The only positive fact which the law required to be proved was the finding of the body, where such was possible. The body of the deceased having been found, it was to be considered whether the prisoner administered poison to her—whether it had been administered to her by the prisoner or by herself. The only allegation that she had done so was that of the prisoner himself, and if the jury thought the extraordinary story told by him was worthy of credit, it would agree with the latter mode of accounting for her death. But if they did not believe it, they had no other conclusion left than that he had committed the crime imputed to him.”

The learned judge then proceeded to comment on the evidence of Mrs. Ashley, and others, who deposed to the perfect health and good spirits of the deceased up to a few minutes of the discovery of her lifeless body, and to the medical evidence of the perfect state of her internal bodily organs, leaving no doubt that she had not died from natural causes. He then went to the evidence of Messrs. Champneys and Pickering, the surgeons, who, on opening the body of the deceased on the day following her death smelt the odour of the prussic acid.[17] “There, then,” he said, “was evidence at once of the presence of prussic acid in the stomach on the day following a sudden death accompanied by appearances, such as would be symptomatic of sudden death from that powerful poison. Mr. Cooper, the chemist, analysed the contents of the stomach subsequently and obtained a quantity of pure Prussian blue from it, and before he proceeded further with the evidence on this point, he would observe, that the jury should never lose sight of the conduct of the prisoner during the whole of the proceedings. He then proceeded to comment on the evidence of the presence of prussic acid in the stomach immediately after death, and the allegation of the Prisoner’s counsel, that it was producible from apples, and that it might have been produced from natural causes in the stomach, which contained a quantity of apple pulp. He pointed out that from all the medical evidence, it was proved that, that acid was contained not in the apple, but in the pip, and that pips were not found in the pulp in the deceased’s stomach. It was also proved that prussic acid had been obtained from the pips themselves only by a process of distillation, and was not produced by the mere natural process of digestion.[18] No one would die from eating apple pips, although a person might be killed by the prussic acid obtained from them by a chemist. Besides, the action of the acid was sudden and immediate, and the deceased had died in the manner she would have done after suddenly swallowing some.”

With respect to the evidence regarding the odour of the acid being perceptible under this or that circumstance, said the Judge:—

“All that could be inferred was, that though the perception of it was a positive proof of its presence, the non-perception was no proof of its not being present. As to the deceased having died from water having been poured down her throat, it was quite idle to attribute it to that. At that moment she was not living: death had already done its work. With regard to the quantity of prussic acid requisite to kill a human being, it had been proved that less than a grain would kill in some cases, as appeared by the melancholy cases so frequently referred to of the seven epileptic patients in Paris; and Mr. Cooper had proved that more than a grain existed in the stomach of the deceased. It was said that the experiments were not satisfactorily conducted—that was a question for the jury.

“In considering the conduct of the prisoner, the jury must couple it with all the other evidence, in order to judge how far it bore out or contradicted the inferences that might be derived from it. It appeared that on the day in question the prisoner had gone to the Paddington station of the Great Western Railway and taken his place for Slough. He had left his great coat at the Jerusalem coffee-house, and told the waiter that he was going to dine at the West End of town. That was untrue, and he must have made that false statement for some object or other. He went down to Slough at five o’clock, and between six and seven Mrs. Ashley went round to the deceased’s house, in consequence of the noise she heard of stifled screaming. She met the prisoner in the garden in a state of agitation—so great that he could not undo the latch of the gate. She opened it for him. As to the observation she made about fearing that her neighbour was ill, she could not say that the prisoner heard it, and therefore it went for nothing. Let that pass. However, after she got in at the door of the deceased’s house, she turned round and saw the prisoner looking at her, and such was the effect upon her that she felt alarmed, and closed and fastened the door. At seven o’clock the prisoner was seen by a postboy, and he was then making towards the station. At ten minutes after seven he was at the station. He was next seen getting into the Eton omnibus, and asking to be set down at Herschel House. What his intention was in going to Herschel House does not appear. He was traced back again to the station, and an alarm having been given, a signal was made by the electric telegraph, and he was seen to alight from the railway carriage at Paddington, and was then traced home. When he was taken up next morning, and told what he was taken for, his answer was, that he knew no one at Slough. It had been suggested by his counsel that this was strictly true, as the deceased did not live exactly at Slough, but a little distance from it. It had also been suggested that he wished to prevent his wife hearing of his improper connection. It would be for the jury to say what degree of weight should be given to these explanations.

“He had told several falsehoods when informed of the nature of the charge. On the Friday, about one o’clock, the prisoner had an interview with his legal adviser, and after that, but not until after that, did he make any attempt at explanation or give any account of what had taken place; and the account which he then gave was the extraordinary statement of her self-destruction. Here, then, the prisoner represented himself as present when the poison was administered, and as it was found in her stomach, it was for the jury to say whether the question did not amount to the simple one, of whether she had destroyed herself or the prisoner had administered it. If he thought she had been threatening to poison herself, he should at least have stayed to see what would be the effect upon her. The jury would next observe, keeping the prisoner’s story in mind, that no such vial as that described by him was found in the house. It had been proved by Mr. Thomas, who had sold him the poison in the morning, that the prisoner had prussic acid in his possession that day. He (the judge) did not give much weight to the observation that he would not have gone back the next day to the same shop for more if he were conscious of guilt, because in cases of murder, and especially of murder by poison, it was found that great precautions were not used. The perpetrators did not at all expect to be found out. As to the medicinal use alleged to have been made by the prisoner of the deadly poison, he might have had varicose veins; but at all events it had been shown that he had poison in his possession—he had the means of doing this act on the day it was committed.”

Coming then to the question of motive the Judge gave a brief history of the connection between the prisoner and the deceased, and, after detailing its commencement, commented on it as showing her extraordinary affection and devotion to the prisoner.

“With striking self-devotion,” said Baron Parke, “she had said, that, in order not to prevent the union of the prisoner with the lady to whom he was about to be married, she would go out of the world, and be dead to the world, even to her own mother, from that day forth; and the jury had heard from that very mother that from that time she had never heard of her unfortunate daughter until after her death. She kept her promise. She did go out of the world, and went from place to place till she went to reside at Slough. It appeared that there she received from the prisoner an allowance of £13 a quarter, and on the day in question it was seen that he was to have taken her her quarterly allowance. When taken into custody, the sum of £12 10_s._, besides silver, was found in his pocket; and it was proved that he had drawn a cheque for £14 that morning. From that fact it might be inferred that he had gone down with a sort of mixed feeling, either of paying her the money or, if he had the opportunity of accomplishing his purpose, of poisoning her. But as to motive for destroying her, it had been suggested that no man would commit such a dreadful crime for the sake of getting rid of expense. That, he should say, was not a matter to be easily judged of.”

His Lordship then touched upon all the evidence regarding his alleged pecuniary circumstances, and read the letter from his wife, in which allusion was made to his anxiety to have the papers from Sydney. “As to the feeling appeal made upon that affectionate letter by his counsel, it only proved that the prisoner had been very kind to and enjoyed the affection of his wife, which was not at all incompatible with the commission of the crime with which he stood charged towards another woman.”

As to the alleged previous attempt to poison the deceased in September last, the Judge considered that there was no sufficient proof that he then administered prussic acid to her. It was, however, remarkable that after drinking porter with the prisoner on the 30th September, she should have been so ill, and that after drinking porter with him on the 1st of January she should have been taken ill and died. The strong facts against the prisoner, in his opinion, “were his presence at the woman’s house at the time she died; his declarations before and after his arrest, and the fact that prussic acid was found in her stomach.”

The Judge then read over the whole of the material evidence, and, with the usual caution, left the case in the hands of the jury. On Mr. Gunning reminding him of the evidence to the prisoner’s character which had been produced, Baron Parke said—“Such evidence was admissible in cases of this kind, because it went to show the general impression of the habits and feelings of a person. The prisoner was reputed to be a kind-hearted, benevolent man. It was admitted that he had been transported for some offence, the nature of which they had not been told, but it was said that it was not one to affect his character for kindness of disposition.” The Judge then read over the evidence to character, and left it to the jury to decide in reference to its value to the prisoner in his present position.

On the conclusion of the Judge’s charge, which lasted from eight in the morning until half-past eleven, the Jury retired, and in about half an hour returned a verdict of Guilty. In a few impressive sentences, in which he spoke of the hypocrisy that had characterised the prisoner’s life in the assumption of the garb of a virtuous, peaceful, benevolent, and religious body of persons, the Judge passed on him the dread sentence of the law, which he suffered on the 28th of March. Previously to his execution Tawell handed a written confession to the jail chaplain, that he committed the murder for fear that his wife should discover his connection with the deceased, and that the previous attempt was not made with prussic acid. He never imagined that Sarah Hart had spoken of him to her neighbours, to whom he believed that he was personally unknown, and so more likely to escape detection.

At the Easter Quarter Sessions of the County, held subsequently to the execution of Tawell, an ineffectual attempt was made by a section of the magistrates to compel the jail chaplain to deliver to the visiting justices this written confession, which the chaplain refused to hand over, on the ground of its having been received under the seal of confession, and on the promise that it should not be published. All that was known of it rested on the statement of the governor of the prison, and the general admission of the chaplain that it was a full confession of the prisoner’s guilt.

A difficult legal question arose, after Tawell’s death, with reference to his Australian land, which the Crown re-granted to his widow and family, after its forfeiture by his conviction; whether this re-grant should prevail over the claims of a previous purchaser, a retired auctioneer, who had houses on it, who alleged that he had purchased it for a bonâ fide consideration, under a sufficient power of attorney, executed before Tawell’s conviction. “The affixing the seal of the colony to this grant by Sir W. Denison, created a serious difference between that governor and his chief minister, Mr. Cowper. The seal was affixed pursuant to the instructions of the Secretary of the Colonies, who only acted in the matter in accordance with the opinion of the Attorney and Solicitor-General of England. A part of the sworn duty of a colonial governor is to obey the instructions of the Secretary of State for the Colonies.”[19] The governor, therefore, sent his private secretary for the great seal of the colony and himself executed the new deed. On this being done the owners of the property found the ground cut from under their feet, and it never came before the law courts, but it is believed that some compromise was effected with the family of Tawell, and so the matter ended.

TRIAL OF GEORGE BALL FOR POISONING HIS MOTHER WITH PRUSSIC ACID.

July, 1860, HOME CIRCUIT, LEWES, before COLERIDGE, CHIEF JUSTICE of Common Pleas. BARROW, for the Prosecution. SERJEANT BALLANTINE for the Defence.

This case, really of misadventure, is reported, briefly, as showing the carelessness with which dangerous medicines may, no doubt most unintentionally, be administered even by professional men, the culpable ignorance in some of those chemists who deal in such deadly preparations.

The accused, a medical man, but not in regular practice, had for some time attended his mother, a very ailing old lady, and been in the habit of giving her small doses of prussic acid, as a remedy for violent attacks of vomiting to which she was subject. On the 11th of July in consequence, he purchased of a Mr. Moswell, a chemist in Lewes, a drachm of Scheele’s prussic acid, equal to 60 “minims,” and gave her a dose of 4 “minims.” The result was favourable, and the old lady went for a walk. On her return, however, she again complained, and the accused administered another dose of prussic acid, evidently from its effects, a deadly quantity, as she hardly got to her bedroom before she became insensible, and died almost instantaneously. The accused believed he had given her only seven drops, the proper quantity to be given. That he gave her seven drops was not doubted, but that the size of drops differ under circumstances as much as the strength of Scheele’s preparation of the acid, will be seen from the following evidence.

Mr. Scrate, a surgeon at Lewes (who was sent for by the accused, found the lady dead and the accused apparently in a very distressed state of mind), said:—

“I asked what was the matter; and the accused said he had given her seven drops of prussic acid, and witness replied he must have given her more.”

Chief Justice.—“Would seven drops be sufficient to cause death?”

Witness.—“Not according to my experience; it was the proper quantity to be given. The smallest quantity of prussic acid on record having caused death was of nine-tenths of a grain.”

Chief Justice.—“How many ‘minims’ would a ‘drop’ contain?”

Witness.—“That would depend upon how the drops were obtained from the bottle. If the cork was partly in, the drop would be larger than if it was carefully poured from the open neck of the bottle. Some medical men made use of one method and some of the other, but it was his practice not to rely on ‘drops,’ but to measure ‘minims.’”

To Mr. Barrow.—“With such a deadly poison as prussic acid I should say that it was not prudent for any medical man to rely on ‘drops,’ but to measure ‘minims.’ The proper doses, as marked on all bottles of Scheele’s strength, to be administered were one, two, or the largest three ‘minims.’ Scheele’s acid was not uniform in strength: sometimes it contained four, sometimes five, and sometimes as much as six per cent.”

Chief Justice.—“Would not that amount to almost the difference between life and death?”

Witness.—“It would make a very great difference certainly. Taylor and other eminent medical men have recommended that Scheele’s prussic acid should not be used, on account of the very great variation of strength. I myself always use that of the Pharmacopœia. But notwithstanding what has been written upon the subject by many eminent men, Scheele’s acid is generally used in the profession.”

Chief Justice.—“Supposing the acid to be of the highest strength you have mentioned, do you consider seven drops would have been sufficient to cause death?”

Witness.—“I don’t believe they would.”

To Mr. Barrow.—“Six per cent. is an exceptional strength, but I should think that it would take seventeen minims of that strength to cause death.”

Chief Justice.—“What do you say is the difference between a ‘drop’ and a ‘minim’?”

Witness.—“That would depend on the sort of ‘drop.’ The prisoner afterwards gave me a bottle which contained prussic acid. He told me he had given his mother four minims, and 2·5 minims remained. I did not test the strength of what remained, but had no doubt the deceased died from the effects of prussic acid.”

To Serjeant Ballantine.—“There was a broken cork in the bottle when the accused gave it to me. In his opinion ‘seventeen minims’ was the smallest dose that would destroy life. It was very easy to destroy life when dropping the liquid from a bottle. When accused told him he had given seven drops, he understood that he had given three and a half minims. He had never heard of any instance in which the strength of Scheele’s acid had exceeded six per cent.”

Mr. C. H. Moswell (chemist in Lewes).—“On the 11th of July accused came to his shop and asked for some prussic acid. Gave him a drachm, which would contain sixty minims. Did not measure it, but gave what he considered a quarter of the bottle.”

Cross-examined by Serjeant Ballantine.—“As you say you really did not measure it, can you tell us how much prussic acid you really did give?”

Witness.—“I cannot say to a drop. I am sure he had fifty drops. I consider a ‘drop’ and a ‘minim’ synonymous. I gave him about the quantity, but when prussic acid is dispensed by a medical man, he is, of course, careful as to the quantity he uses.”

Chief Justice.—“We have been told that a ‘drop’ contains two ‘minims,’ and this witness says he looks upon them as synonymous.”

Serjeant Ballantine.—“If you were told to give a patient so many ‘minims,’ should you give him so many ‘drops’?”

Witness.—“Certainly not.”

Serjeant Ballantine.—“Can you tell us the strength of the prussic acid you sold?”

Witness.—“I don’t know what the strength was—I should suppose about four per cent.”

Case for the prosecution closed.

The Chief Justice called the attention of the Jury to the evidence and observed, that the fact of the cork being broken in the bottle and defective was certainly an important matter for their consideration, as it admitted the possibility that the prussic acid might have escaped from the bottle accidentally, and then there was an absence of evidence that an excessive dose had been administered by the accused.

The Jury almost immediately returned a verdict of “Not Guilty.”

If the estimate of the witness Scrate is taken for the difference between a drop and a minim, and the second witness, Moswell, is correct in saying that he gave the accused at least 50 drops, equal to 25 minims, as only 2·5 minims were left in the bottle, equal to 4¼ drops; in the two doses the accused must have administered more than 45 drops, equal to 22½ minims. If the cork was not broken in the bottle when the first dose was administered, the probability is that the dose then given did not exceed seven drops of the size that would make them equal to 3½ minims, thus leaving 19 minims for the second dose. It is to be regretted that the strength of the prussic acid was not tested.

* * * * *

NOTE ON TAWELL’S CASE.

In a case of the poisoning at Egglesham, near Glasgow, by prussic acid, of a young woman, of the name of Agnes Montgomery, by Peter Walker, a tailor, the symptoms were thus described by one of the witnesses, as well as the effect of prussic acid on herself:—

“After we learnt that the moaning came from Aggie’s room, we came up, got Clarkson’s key, and went in. (As in Tawell’s case, the prisoner had left the girl’s room only a few minutes before.) Aggie was sitting on a chair (in which it was probable from other evidence that she had been placed by her murderer), with her head leaning on the table. The body was quite still. There was a little froth coming out of the wicks of her mouth. It was a little coloured with blood; and we afterwards found she had bit her tongue and her lips. She threw back at different times, as if in distress. Her right hand was very firmly closed. I loosed the boot of the left foot, and found it was swelled and quite stiff. About ten minutes after that was another groan: the breathing was slow, and with great oppression. She sighed six times before she died. Her skin was getting quite cold after we got her. I thought there was a little sweat on her face. We got hot water to bathe her arms. The eyes were large and staring. She died about three quarters of an hour after we got her. When we went into her room, I found a sickening smell. I felt in my nostrils a kind of nipping, and my throat was dry. I felt it off Aggie the moment I came forward. I know the smell of almonds, but can’t say it was exactly like that. On the 5th of November I saw the superintendent of police, and others, and saw something (it was prussic acid) put into beer. I smelt the beer; and after some of it was poured on the floor, I recognised it as the same smell. It affected me in the same way as before in the nostrils and throat.”—Evidence of Mrs. M’Donald.

* * * * *

In this case, on a post-mortem examination of the exhumed body, the presence of prussic acid was clearly detected; and it was proved on the trial that the prisoner had employed a carrier to get some prussic acid for him, and that the bottle containing it had been given to him on the day of the murder; and the fragments of a glass phial were subsequently discovered, with the key of the girl’s room, at the root of a tree, at which the prisoner had been seen stopping, as he returned from going for a doctor. In this case the poison had been most probably given in beer, as in Tawell’s, a tumbler in which beer had been being found on the girl’s table.

The fellow, two months afterwards, tried to poison a Mr. Mason and his wife, with whom he had gone to lodge in Glasgow, with prussic acid, but happily failed in his attempt.

He confessed his guilt; and at first gave as his motive his desire to possess himself of the girl’s money, but subsequently said he could not tell what possessed him to do it. “Following so closely on the case of Madeleine Smith, the probability is that her case had had on him the same effect as Palmer’s on Dove—exciting a morbid desire to tamper with deadly drugs, and that the death of his victim, and the danger of the others, was as much due to this feeling as the desire for plunder.” He was discovered to have been transported for robbery, and to have been guilty of other crimes. He now confessed that he had murdered a lad, by pushing him into a quarry hole. He was executed at Paisley, Jan. 14, 1858.—Annual Register for 1858.

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III. CHEMICAL NOTES

NOTE I.—HYDROCYANIC OR PRUSSIC ACID.

Nature of—Strength of different preparations of, English and foreign—Where found—Tests, preliminary: (1) Odour—(2) Silver—(3) Prussian blue—(4) Sulphur—(5) Guaiacum—(6) Uranium—(7) Picric acid—(8) Cupric sulphate—(9) Cobalt chloride—(10) Mercuric oxide—(11) Peroxide of hydrogen—(12) Mercurous nitrate. Test apparatus—Salts of hydrocyanic acid: (1) Potassium cyanide—(2) Mercuric cyanide—(3) Cyanides of the heavy metals—(4) Double cyanides—(5) Sulphocyanides—Oil of bitter almonds—Antidotes—Fatal dose—Symptoms—Post-mortem appearances—Drops and minims—Period after death at which hydrocyanic acid can be discovered—Formic acid to be tested for—Processes.

Synonyms.—Cyanhydric or prussic acid, Hydric cyanide, Hydrogen cyanide, Acidum borussicum, Blausaüre, Berlinerblausaüre.

Formula HCN, i.e., a compound of single atoms, of hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, in the proportions by weight of 1 + 12 + 14 = 27. In its pure state (anhydrous, or free from water), it is a feebly acid, colourless, mobile liquid, inflammable and very volatile. Boiling point 24·5° C. Much lighter than water: sp. gr. ·7058. It has a characteristic overpowering and oppressive odour, resembling peach-blossom or laurel-water. But the anhydrous acid, from its volatility and dangerous character is rarely seen or made. In commerce it is always found as a dilute aqueous solution, the varying strengths in real HCN being:—

Per cent. HCN.

Pharmacopœia, British, Swiss, America,} Borussica, London, Norway, } 2 Schräders 1·5 Pharmac. Saxony 1·9 ” Austria, Baden, Batavia 2·5 ” Edinburgh, Dublin 3·3 Vauquelin’s acid 3·3 to 3·5 Pharmac. Bavaria 4 Scheele’s acid 4 to 5 (rarely 6) Duflos’s acid 9 French Pharmacopœia 10 to 10·5 Riner’s and Pfaff’s acids 10 Hessian Pharmacopœia 18 to 20 Koller’s 25 Robiquet’s 50

In this country, only Scheele’s, and the British Pharmacopœia (2 per cent.) acid, are usually met with.

These numbers, however, must be regarded merely as rough approximations for two reasons; first, on account of the extreme volatility of the acid—if loosely stoppered, or frequently opened, it rapidly loses strength—second, both the anhydrous acid and its aqueous solution are decomposed by light, with formation of a brown matter. This change is supposed to be retarded by a trace of mineral acid, hence a little hydrochloric or sulphuric acid is frequently added to the commercial solution with this object. But the acid may even be stronger than supposed, as the methods of preparation are somewhat various, and the one adopted may have been carelessly carried out. Scheele’s acid is said to be the most popular among medical men; samples of it obtained from different large firms and examined by the author showed very irregular strengths, the lowest being 2, and the highest 8 per cent. The latter was purchased at the shop of a chemist who said he had made it himself, and could guarantee it was of full strength. He had evidently made allowance for deterioration. Woodman and Tidy found 16 samples sold in one neighbourhood as B.P. acid to contain 0·6 to 3·2 per cent. of HCN; others have found 0·25 per cent. not infrequent. It follows that if, in a poison case, a bottle has been found of a hydrocyanic preparation of a definite name, or even with a certain strength or dose marked on it, it will not be safe to trust to such figures without actually determining the amount. In Ball’s trial (Lewes, 1860), the judge asked whether this variation in strength would not make the difference between a medicinal and a poisonous dose? It would not, as the maximum medicinal dose, 4 grains, of even the abnormally strong (8 per cent.) Scheele’s acid mentioned above, would only contain 0·32 grain of anhydrous HCN, and it requires at least half a grain to cause death, while about 1 grain is the usual fatal quantity. And a medical man would not even give the maximum medicinal dose as a beginning, and without precaution.

ACIDUM HYDROCYANICUM DILUTUM, PHARMACOPŒIA BRITANNICA.

We shall use the abbreviation “B. P. 2 per cent.” for this acid, which has the characteristic odour, a sp. gr. of ·997, and a taste “at first bland and sweet, ultimately pungent and acrid” (Thomson), “hot and bitter” (Taylor), “cooling, with pungent bitter aftertaste” (Watts). If pure, it only slightly and transiently reddens litmus; if other acids have been added to keep it, it may have a stronger reddening effect. Also, if pure, it leaves no residue on platinum, and gives no precipitate with barium chloride, but with silver nitrate it gives an immediate white curdy precipitate of silver cyanide, not blackening in daylight as the chloride does, soluble in ammonia, insoluble in dilute, but soluble in hot concentrated nitric acid. It dissolves mercuric oxide, giving a mercuric cyanide which may be obtained in white crystals on evaporation. The vapour is said to be more deadly than the fluid acid. The weaker the acid, the more permanent it is. Glycerine increases its stability (J. Williams); this might be useful if suspected substances had to be kept a long time.

Occurrence.—Hydrocyanic acid itself has never been found as a natural constituent of the body, although a compound of cyanogen occurs in the saliva (see Sulphocyanides). Hydrocyanic acid is not formed during putrefaction, nor by heating organic substances with chemical reagents at temperatures up to 212° F., as in testing for poisons. The only way in which it may be generated from animal matter is by heating with alkalies to a red heat;[20] this cannot, of course, happen in the ordinary process of testing for prussic acid, though it must be remembered that cyanide might thus be formed in an ash (by burning), without having been present in the original substance.

It is rather frequent, however, in the vegetable kingdom, and consequently in a poisoning case the defence often sets up the theory that it has been ingested in the food (Tawell’s Trial, &c.). It is necessary, therefore, to examine in what kind of food, and to what amount, it may be taken.

Its principal source is the seeds, leaves, and flowers, and sometimes the bark, of most of the species of the sub-orders Amygdaleæ and Pomeæ of the natural order Rosaceæ. It does not occur in them ready-formed. There is a substance called Amygdalin, a white bitterish crystalline body, which may be extracted by alcohol from these plants. Amygdalin when dissolved by itself in water does not produce HCN, and is probably harmless, but there exists by its side in the plant a species of ferment called Emulsin or Synaptase, which has the power, when macerated in water with amygdalin, of breaking up the latter into glucose (so-called grape-sugar), benzoyl hydride (oil of bitter almonds), and hydrocyanic acid. In the plant the amygdalin apparently exists in cells apart from the emulsin, but by crushing in water, or masticating in the mouth, the change is very rapidly effected. By long soaking the same result may happen, as in cherry brandy; here the diluted spirit dissolves the amygdalin, and the emulsin then may act. But if, in the stomach, the apple-pips or cherry-stones should be found whole, it is almost impossible that the amygdalin should be decomposed, protected as it is by its horny or stony envelope. Stones and pips, in fact, pass through the body intact, and are found in the fæces.

Yet as amygdalin and its decomposition may be much mentioned by the defence, the following account may be useful.

100 parts of amygdalin yield 6 parts HCN.

It has been found in the species of Rosaceæ given below, generally in fruit, flowers, leaves, sometimes bark, rarely root.

Pyrus malus (apple pips), domesticus (pear).

Prunus spinosa (sloe), avium (bird cherry), padus (wild service), Virginiana or serotina (wild black cherry), capricida, insititia (bullace), domestica (plum, damson, &c.).

Amygdalus communis (almond), Persica (peach), lævis (nectarine).

Armeniaca vulgaris (apricot).

Cerasus communis (cherry), acida, laurocerasus (cherry-laurel), Lusitanica (Portugal laurel).

Cydonia vulgaris (quince).

Sorbus aucuparia (mountain ash), torminalis, hybrida.

Cratægus oxyacantha (hawthorn, young branches).

Spiræa aruncus, sorbifolia, japonica (not in herbaceous species).

Hydrocyanic acid, ready formed, has been found in the roots of the bitter and sweet cassava (Jatropha manihot).

If the poisonous dose of the B. P. (2 per cent.) acid be at least 30 minims (Royle’s Mat. Med., Dr. Harley, 6th ed.) the following table shows the amount of some of the above which is needed.

┌─────────────────────┬──────────┬─────────┬────────────┬────────────┐ │ │Percentage│Equal to │Amount │ │ │ Substance. │ of │ HCN │required for│ Observer. │ │ │amygdalin.│per cent.│poisonous │ │ │ │ │ │ dose. │ │ ├─────────────────────┼──────────┼─────────┼────────────┼────────────+ │Cherry kernels │ 3 │ 0·18 │ 333 grains│Gieseler. │ │Pips of sweet apples │ 0·45 │ 0·027 │ 2222 ” │C.G. Stewart│ │Pips of bitter apples│ 0·85 │ 0·051 │ 1176 ” │ ” │ │Wild service kernels │ 1·5 │ 0·08 │ 750 ” │Hermann. │ │Flowers, fruit, and }│ 1·0 │ 0·06 │ 1000 ” │Riegel. │ │bark of do. }│ │ │ │ │ │Bitter almond pulp │ 4·25 │ 0·25 │ 240 ” │Allen. │ │Sweet Cassava │ │ 0·017 │ 3500 ” │Francis. │ │Bitter do. │ │ 0·027 │ 2222 ” │ ” │ └─────────────────────┴──────────┴─────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

Sweet almonds contain emulsin, but no amygdalin, hence give no HCN (see Tawell’s Trial, p. 40).

According to my own experiments, 837 sweet apples (apples weighing 135 pounds, pips about 5 oz.), would be required for a poisonous dose of HCN; whereas 130 bitter apples, weighing 18 pounds, and the pips about 2½ oz., would suffice. The pips of bitter apples are bigger, more numerous, and weigh about three times as much as those of sweet apples.

Among substances containing much more HCN, and actually poisonous on that account, are:—

HCN. Crude bitter almond oil 8 to 15 per cent. Bitter almond water ¼ to 1 ” Cherry laurel oil 2 to 3 ” ” ” water[21] ¼ to ¾ ” Cluster cherry oil 9 to 10 ”

(Allen, Comm. Org. Anal.) It is obvious that of fruits an impossibly large quantity must be eaten to produce any considerable amount of HCN. In Tawell’s trial, Mr. Cooper, the analyst, deposed that the seeds from 15 apples gave him an exceedingly small quantity of Prussian blue. Whereas, Henry Thomas, a druggist’s assistant, stated that “15 small apples gave 2¼ grains of silver cyanide” [equal to 0·46, or nearly ½ a grain, of anhydrous HCN, corresponding to 25 minims of B. P. acid, nearly a poisonous dose!] “This was done under the direction of a lecturer at the London Hospital.” A fair sample of the erroneous and bewildering evidence that is frequently offered in courts of justice.

Mr. Cooper also stated “there is a great difference between bitter and sweet apples; the bitter contain a great deal of prussic acid, the sweet, I believe, none at all!” This statement is misleading; no apples contain prussic acid, but all that I have met with will yield it by maceration, as all contain amygdalin. The highest class of eating apples, such as Newtown pippins, Ribstones, and Blenheims, contain only a minute trace. These have very few pips, 3 to 5 to each apple, while the bitter varieties, such as “winesours,” have 9 to 13 pips.

In the arts, cyanides are used in photography, dyeing, cleaning lace and metals, electro-plating, removing silver stains, &c. Their solutions may cause accidental poisoning, either by the fumes or by absorption through the skin, especially if the latter is abraded.

Hydrocyanic acid is also formed (1) in the preparation of nitrous ether (sweet spirit of nitre), (2) by distilling albumen, fibrin, casein, or gelatin, with sulphuric acid and bichromate of potash, or manganese peroxide, (3) by the dry distillation of albuminous bodies. It is hardly necessary to say that these formations could not occur in the ordinary methods of testing.

TESTS: PRELIMINARY.—It cannot be too strongly insisted that all operations for the detection of HCN should be carried out as soon after death as possible, on account of the loss from volatility, or from secondary changes. (See Sulphocyanides.)

Allen asserts (Commercial Organic Analysis, 1879), that detection in the body is rarely possible more than twenty-four hours after death; but Taylor (Med. Juris., 1873, p. 368) has found it in the stomach twelve days after, saying, however, that “after the stomach had been exposed a few days longer, all had disappeared.” In a dog’s stomach he found it, after twenty-four hours’ exposure, and washing with water. In a human stomach, success was achieved seven days after death, where no odour was perceptible; in another case, after twenty-two days in the stomach, and after two months in the spleen. It may be found in the stomach, and not in the tissues; but in most cases it is easily detected, soon after death, in the blood, organs, &c. The vapour of HCN will traverse paper, wet or dry bladder, &c., in a few minutes (Taylor), and few stoppers are close enough to retain it. Hence care should be taken to shut up the suspected matters at once in glass bottles accurately stoppered; bad stoppers are worse than corks.

The stomach should be first examined entire, to ascertain odour, &c., noticing whether alkaline or acid, then cut in pieces, under distilled water sufficient to cover it, the whole measured, and one-half (acidulated with tartaric acid, if alkaline), placed in a capacious retort, and distilled in a bath of water saturated with salt to raise the boiling point. The condenser should be well supplied with cold water, the receiver attached airtight, with a mercury valve (a narrow glass U-tube, containing mercury), to prevent undue pressure. A little distilled water, about ½ oz., should be placed in the receiver. The distillation should be continued till one-third to one-half of the original liquid has passed over. The tests may then be applied to the distillate.

Allen recommends us to distil with water alone about one-half. If there is no result on testing the distillate, continue with addition of tartaric acid. Finally, add a considerable excess of moderately dilute sulphuric and hydrochloric acid, and carry the distillation nearly to dryness. In the last stage sulpho-, ferro-and ferricyanides and mercuric cyanide are decomposed, and give HCN. The original should be tested for ferrocyanide, &c. This seems a process calculated to give the clearest idea of the form in which the HCN is present, but is open to the objection that it is protracted, and may hence cause loss.

Sokoloff. (Chem. Centr., 1876, 603) advises a much more heroic treatment. “Strongly acidify with sulphuric acid, and distil over a water bath for two or three days, replenishing the water as evaporated. The longer the distillation, the more accurate the result.” He adds, that the muscles contain the greater part of the HCN. He quotes figures in support of his results, but I have not found such prolongation necessary; and we must remember that HCN is decomposed by heating with moderately strong mineral acids.

The following modification, proposed by the author, may be advantageous, as diminishing the risk of loss, and also effecting concentration:—Prepare exactly equivalent solutions of silver nitrate, and hydrochloric acid: the silver solution may contain 17 grammes of silver nitrate, the hydrochloric solution 3·65 grammes of hydric chloride, per litre. Place in the receiver 100 cubic centimetres of the silver solution (= 1·70 gramme silver nitrate) before distillation. This is allowing large excess, to provide for exceptional quantities of HCN. If any quantity of HCN be present, the liquid in the receiver will become milky; if it does not, there cannot be more than a minute trace. Transfer the distillate and washings to a retort, provided with a thistle-funnel, and boil down to one-third of its bulk; then add, through the funnel, 100 cubic centimetres of the hydric chloride solution, which will precipitate all the silver as chloride, and liberate the HCN. Distill with the same precautions as before: the first 25 cubic centimetres will contain probably all the HCN. If doubted, a further quantity may be collected and tested. The 25 cubic centimetres of distillate may now be subjected to the following tests, taking care that each portion is measured before being examined, in order that the idea of the quantity present may be definite. For instance, in the Prussian blue, and sulphocyanide tests, the resulting colour may be imitated by standard solutions: in the silver test, a standard silver solution should also be used, and thus a triply-confirmed knowledge of the quantity present may be attained; and little bottles, containing the results, should be preserved, to show in the courts of justice.

I. ODOUR.—All tests involving odour are affected seriously by the remarkable differences between different people as to their sense of smell. We hear much of “colour-blindness;” but the analogous olfactory defect has almost escaped remark. Yet “smell-blindness,” as I have formerly christened it, or “anozism,” if a Greek word be required, is exceedingly common, and chemists and medical men are frequently afflicted with it. I have known an artist, who could not smell strong ammonia, yet delighted in the odour of new paint, which he compared to roses. Many laboratory students can neither smell acetic acid, arseniuretted hydrogen, nor cyanogen. An assistant was so fond of sulphuretted hydrogen, that he was once found insensible beside the apparatus, having narcotized himself with the gas (he recovered); and many more such eccentricities. In the case of prussic acid these diversities are enormous. Some are so sensitive, that the least trace in a room becomes rapidly unbearable, causing headache and nausea; others are like photographers, and can work in a heavily-cyanogened atmosphere. Such idiosyncrasies become of great importance in evidence; for example:—

In Tawell’s trial, Mr. Champneys, surgeon, testified as follows: “Have no experience in detecting odour of prussic acid in a human subject. Should think it may be taken without detection. Should expect it in the mouth and breath, but there may be exceptions. There was no odour in her [the deceased’s] breath; but, on opening the body, I was positive I smelt prussic acid. The other two surgeons could not smell it.” Afterwards, when the contents of the stomach were transferred to a jar, neither the three surgeons, nor Mr. Cooper, the analyst, could perceive the least odour of prussic acid, even when the contents were boiled. Nor was it smelt in the blood. Mr. Cooper subsequently stated: “I have no doubt that prussic acid may exist without being smelt: absence of smell may arise from dilution, or from its being covered by the smell of other substances. When I smell it, it affects spasmodically the back of the throat. Sometimes it has produced a spasmodic constriction about the throat without my smelling it.” Here was a well-marked case of intermittent smell-blindness.

There were also several questions as to whether prussic acid might have existed in the form of an inodorous salt. Mr. Champneys further stated that he put ½ drachm of prussic acid into a tumbler filled with Guinness’s porter, and the smell was scarcely perceptible. Mr. Norblad, surgeon, deposed that he mixed 12 grains of prussic acid with a pint of porter, but could not then smell it. “Some of the porter dropped on the table, and I did then smell it.” In the same trial, Henry Thomas, druggist’s assistant, mixed 30 drops of B.P. prussic acid with 11 oz. of porter, and found the odour of the acid slightly perceptible; yet, when he was pouring Scheele’s acid from a bottle, three women had to leave the room to avoid suffocation!

In a case of suicide by cyanide of potassium (Chem. News, 1861, p. 261), the smell of prussic acid was not perceived by the surgeon, either immediately after death or at the post-mortem examination, nor by the analyst until the contents had been distilled with dilute sulphuric acid.

To help in elucidating this matter I have made some experiments as to the detection of the odour of prussic acid. An acid of 2 per cent. strength (B.P.) was used.

1. From a bottle of Guinness’s stout, freshly opened, 3 samples of 1 fluid oz. each were measured. To the first 1 drop of the acid was added, to the second 2 drops, the third being left untouched. This was done out of my sight in another room. They were then privately marked by an assistant, and brought in; when myself and two others, one of them entirely inexperienced, independently and at once classified them without hesitation correctly as to the relative amounts of prussic acid. The odour was so distinct as to produce, when inhaled, a feeling of oppression, and to quite overpower the odour of the beer.

1 drop in 1 fl. oz. = 0·23 per cent. of the dilute (B.P.) acid. ” = ·0046 per cent. of real anhydrous HCN.

About 1/30 of a poisonous dose. Hence if a poisonous dose were put into a pint and a half of stout, the odour would be distinct.

2. One drop of the dilute (2 per cent.) acid was added to 6 oz. stout: there resulted a slight but distinct odour of prussic acid. Hence a poisonous dose in nine pints would be smelt. Covered by a watch-glass, with a drop of yellow ammonium sulphide on it, it was warmed; the drop, on evaporation, gave a distinct red sulphocyanide reaction with ferric chloride. Exposed to the air for twenty-four hours, all the above samples had lost their odour, and failed to give the sulphocyanide reaction.

3. Two samples of urine, measuring ½ pint each, were treated respectively with 1 and 2 drops of B.P. acid (strength in this case 1·18 per cent. HCN), and a third ½ pint left untouched, the same precautions being used as with the above beers. Three independent witnesses again classified them without difficulty as to relative amounts of the poison. This is 2 drops of an exceptionally weak acid to the pint.

4. The contents of a human stomach, very fetid from decomposition, were divided into two portions of about 2 oz. each: one was left untouched; to the other 1 grain of mercuric cyanide was added, and then about 5 drops of hydrochloric acid, and a little zinc dust. The whole was well stirred, and shut up close. Next day the odour of HCN was very prominent in the one to which the cyanide had been added, in spite of the strong original smell of both.

5. I cannot agree with Taylor that either peppermint or tobacco mask the odour appreciably.

The odour of nitrobenzol, being similar to that of bitter almonds, might lead to a suspicion of prussic acid without due caution (Woodman and Tidy).

In putrefying, organic matters often develope ammonium sulphide, becoming alkaline. The ammonium sulphide would combine with the HCN to form sulphocyanide of ammonium, which is inodorous, but, by distillation with acids, gives HCN. Sulphocyanide, however, could not be produced unless the original matters were alkaline. In Tawell’s, and most other trials, the stomach contents were acid, as they always are naturally from the gastric juice.

Taylor (Med. Jurisprudence, 1873, vol. i., p. 364) mentions a case where the blood had a strong odour of prussic acid, and the mucous membrane of the stomach, even after it had been washed three times with water, also exhaled a strong odour. In another case (Med. Gaz., vol. xxxvi., p. 104), where 20 grains of Scheele’s acid had been taken with ultimate recovery, the vomited matters had no odour, “showing that, if not concealed by other odours, the whole of the acid must have been absorbed.” Many other instances might be quoted where nothing was smelt, and yet the tests revealed prussic acid.

As to the question about the salts of prussic acid, it may be generally said that all poisonous cyanides would smell in the stomach, except, perhaps, mercuric cyanide. See “Properties of the Salts,” p. 73. Possibly the formation of mercuric cyanide may have accounted for the absence of odour in some of the above cases, as I do not find that mercury was tested for, though its compounds are common medicines. Otherwise it is hardly possible that hydrocyanic poisoning should have been effected, and the acid be still there, without its very characteristic odour being perceptible to an observer with an acute olfactory sense. I have entered at some length into the question of odour, as much importance has been attached to it in the trials, and I still consider it as one of the most delicate and positive of tests.

II. SILVER TEST.—When silver nitrate is added to a solution containing HCN or a cyanide acidulated with nitric acid, a white precipitate falls of silver cyanide, soluble in ammonia, insoluble in dilute, but soluble in hot concentrated nitric acid, and not blackened by light. This reaction is rendered quantitative according to Liebig’s volumetric method. The original solution is made slightly alkaline by potash, and a standard solution containing 1·7 grammes of silver nitrate per litre (1 cub. centimetre = ·0017 grm. AgNO_{3}) is added until a permanent white turbidity is produced, seen best over a sheet of black paper or a black book. Then each cub. centimetre used is equivalent to a double quantity or ·00054 grammes of HCN. Formic acid, or chlorides, do not interfere; in fact, it is advantageous to have a little chloride present.

The silver cyanide may be also estimated gravimetrically by adding excess of silver nitrate, collecting the precipitate on a weighed filter, washing, drying, and weighing. Silver cyanide corresponds to two-tenths of its weight of HCN (134 gives 27). If chlorides be present, the mixed precipitate of silver cyanide and chloride is weighed, treated with dilute hydrochloric acid, and weighed again. The HCN is thus displaced, and passes into the filtrate; the silver precipitate, now all as chloride, is weighed again: then the increase of weight multiplied by 27 and divided by 9·5 (the difference between the equivalent weights of silver chloride and cyanide) is equal to the weight of HCN present. But the volumetric process is quite as accurate, and more expeditious.

In poisoning cases advantage is taken of the opacity of silver cyanide thus: A drop of moderately dilute silver nitrate is placed on a watch-glass over the substance, which may be gently warmed, taking care that the steam condensed does not cause the drop to fall. If HCN be present, the drop will become opaque-white from formation of silver cyanide. 1/100 grain of HCN, equal to ¼ grain of B.P. acid, will give this reaction (Taylor). If there is only a small amount, and the action is gradual, the drop on drying in the air may exhibit crystals of silver cyanide, recognizable under the microscope as minute prisms obliquely truncated. Of course the silver nitrate itself may give crystals, but they will be very soluble in water.

Cyanide of silver is decomposed by (1) hydrochloric acid, giving silver chloride; (2) dilute sulphuric acid and zinc, giving silver; (3) sulphuretted hydrogen, giving silver sulphide; in each case HCN is liberated and may be distilled off: then the other tests may be applied.

If sulphuretted hydrogen be present, it will give a black with silver nitrate. The liquid should in this case be previously shaken with just enough carbonate of lead to remove the sulphuretted hydrogen. The latter, however, does not interfere with the Prussian blue or sulphur tests.

When sufficient in quantity, the cyanide of silver, thoroughly dried in a water-bath, may be transferred to a small bulb-tube and heated, the end being closed with the finger. It breaks up into cyanogen gas, silver, and paracyanide of silver, a peculiar glow and effervescence occurring as it decomposes. The cyanogen will have the characteristic bitter almond odour, and, on removing the finger, will burn with a flame violet on the margin and rosy in the centre.

III. PRUSSIAN BLUE (Scheele).—Add to the solution or distillate caustic potash in excess, then a drop or two of fresh ferrous sulphate (protosulphate of iron), and a little ferric chloride (perchloride of iron—the tinct. ferri perchlor. of the Pharmacopœia will do), warm gently for a few minutes, add dilute hydrochloric acid in slight excess: if much HCN be present, a deep blue precipitate (Prussian blue) will remain; if only a trace, the liquid will be greenish, and on standing till the next day a blue deposit will form.[22] This is the only blue iron precipitate which is insoluble in dilute hydrochloric acid.[23]

Remarks.—Sulphuretted hydrogen does not interfere with this test, as the black ferrous sulphide dissolves in hydrochloric acid. The amount of iron salts added should have some relation to the amount of HCN present, an idea of which will have been attained by the silver test. Moderate excess of potash must be present all the time till the hydrochloric acid is added. A large amount of iron salt is objectionable, as the yellow colour interferes with the final green tint with traces of HCN. The test may be made quantitative by imitating the tint with a weak standard solution of potassium ferrocyanide treated with a drop of hydrochloric acid and a drop of ferric chloride, on the same principle as “Nesslerizing” (see Wanklyn’s Water Analysis). Finally the precipitate of Prussian blue should be preserved to exhibit at the trial, as this is the most positive, though not the most delicate, test.

IV. SULPHUR TEST (Liebig).—The liquid to be examined is placed in a somewhat shallow glass dish or beaker, covered almost airtight with a watch-glass, moistened on the under surface with a drop or two of yellow ammonium sulphide. [The ordinary sulphide is commonly yellow enough for the purpose, or, if not, can be made so by warming with a little flowers of sulphur.] After warming gently for a short time (the periods recommended by different authorities vary from half a minute to ten minutes), great care being taken that the steam does not condense and cause the solution on the watch-glass to drop back into the liquid, the cover is removed, dried on a water bath to drive off any excess of ammonium sulphide, treated with a drop or two of water, and a drop of not too acid ferric chloride free from nitric acid and diluted till nearly free from colour. If HCN be present, it will have formed sulphocyanide with the ammonium sulphide, and will therefore generate a blood-red colour with the ferric chloride. If a colour be produced, continue the addition of ferric chloride till no further deepening occurs. The reaction is made quantitative by comparing the tint with that produced by a known quantity of sulphocyanide and ferric solution (Herapath). But there are difficulties in making it exact.

This is the most delicate test for HCN, detecting 1/7930th of a grain of HCN in a very dilute liquid, whereas Prussian blue does not discover less than 1/780th of a grain (Taylor, Ann. Ch. Pharm. lxv., 263). Salts of acetic, formic, and meconic acids give red colours with ferric chloride, but (1) meconic acid is not volatile; (2) the red from acetic and formic acids is at once removed by a slight excess of dilute hydrochloric acid, sulphocyanide is not; (3) sulphocyanide-red is destroyed by solution of mercuric chloride, the others are not.

The above tests are sufficient, but the following additional ones have been at different times proposed.

V. GUAIACUM TEST.—Paper dipped in fresh tincture of guaiacum, containing about 3 per cent. of the resin, then dried, then moistened with dilute cupric sulphate solution (2 per cent.), becomes blue in HCN vapour. But the same effect is produced without HCN by almost all oxydants, such as chlorine, bromine, or iodine, ferric chloride, nitric and nitrous acids, chromic acid, peroxide of hydrogen, ozone (Mohr’s Toxicologie), also by ammonia, hypochlorous acid, soluble chromates, &c. (Blyth).

VI. URANIUM TEST.—A grain or two of pure ferrous salt (ammonio-ferrous sulphate will do), and the same quantity of uranium nitrate, are dissolved in half an ounce of water. Two or three drops of this are placed on a white plate, and a drop of the suspected liquid added. A purple precipitate, or a greyish purple colour in weak solutions, indicates HCN. Cobalt nitrate may be used instead of the uranium salt, and is nearly as delicate. (Carey Lea, American J. of Science [3] ix., 121.)

VII. A hot solution of potassium cyanide mixed with picric acid gives a deep blood-red —“picrocyanic” acid). Free HCN does not give this reaction, and therefore must first be neutralized by an alkali. Said to be more delicate than the iron tests. (C. D. Braun, Zeitschr. f. anal. Ch. iii., 464.)

VIII. Slightly alkalize the distillate with potash, add a few drops of cupric sulphate, and afterwards just enough hydrochloric acid to dissolve the excess of cupric hydrate: white cuprous cyanide will remain undissolved. “This test will detect 1/20000 of HCN in solution.” (Lassaigne, Ann. de Chimie, xxvii., 200.) But a similar effect is produced by hydriodic acid, and potassium iodide might have been administered.

IX. Mix the HCN with excess of alkali, add cobalt chloride and tartaric acid: on exposure to air a deep brown-red colour will be produced. (C. D. Braun, loc. cit.).

X. If to a solution of HCN, potash be added in excess, and then a little very finely pulverised, or precipitated, mercuric oxide, the latter will dissolve. Mercuric oxide is soluble in alkaline fluids only in presence of HCN. (Fresenius, Qual. Anal.).

XI. “With peroxide of hydrogen, natural blood gives effervescence from escape of oxygen, but no discoloration. Blood containing HCN gives a brown colour, the spectroscopic bands disappearing, and no effervescence.” (Schönbein.) Hæmatocrystallin, the colouring matter of the blood corpuscles, combines, in fact, with HCN, giving a dark coloured compound which appears to be crystallizable and definite in composition (Hoppe Seyler), does not act as a carrier of oxygen like the natural hæmatocrystallin, and possesses a distinct spectrum (see Thudichum, Chem. Physiology). The blue masses in the blood described by Ralph (Journ. Microsc. Science, Oct. 24, 1866) have not been found by others.

XII. Mercurous nitrate gives at once with HCN solutions, a black deposit of metallic mercury, and a solution of mercuric cyanide. With calomel, a similar reaction takes place according to Allen, but I have found that the solution is not deodorized even by large excess of calomel, the odour becoming stronger and more pungent than the original HCN. On evaporating, mercuric chloride is left. Probably some cyanogen chloride is formed. The odour is so much intensified that it might be of use as a test. In view of the possible administration of calomel, the reaction is interesting.

Of course it will not be necessary to employ all these methods. The odour, and the silver, Prussian blue, and “sulphur” tests will be sufficient. I would suggest a form of apparatus by which all the latter could be obtained from the original substance without distillation in a retort.

A shallow beaker or glass jar is closed by an india-rubber stopper, through two holes in which are passed glass rods ending in glass spoon bowls bent at right angles, so as to be horizontal when mounted. The bowls should be one inch in diameter, and will have to be specially made. In the first bowl a few drops of silver nitrate are placed, in the second a little potash. The apparatus is put in a warm place for six or eight hours, then the two rods are removed, a third rod substituted, its bowl containing a drop or two of yellow ammonium sulphide, the other hole plugged, and the apparatus put back in the warm place for two or three hours more. The first bowl will have the silver cyanide, the second should be treated with ferric and ferrous salt and hydrochloric acid for Prussian blue (vide), the third evaporated and ferric chloride added for the sulphocyanide test. This arrangement prevents loss of HCN by volatilization, and also, with a little care, avoids any danger of the reagent dropping back into the solution. The three rods cannot safely be placed in together, as the sulphide vapour would blacken the silver.

For the modifications in testing necessitated by the presence of mercury, &c., see under the different Salts.

SALTS.

Hydrocyanic acid combines with bases to form the cyanides, which may be thus grouped:—

A. CYANIDES OF THE ALKALIES (potassium, sodium, ammonium), and of the ALKALINE EARTHS (barium, strontium, calcium, magnesium). These are all soluble in water, are alkaline to test paper, and are decomposed by all acids, even carbonic, hence they exhale an odour of HCN, and are nearly as poisonous as prussic acid itself. If they are present, the stomach contents must be alkaline. The only member of this group likely to be met with is

POTASSIUM CYANIDE, KCN. Broken opaque white lumps, or small crystals, deliquescent, smelling strongly of HCN, soapy to the feel, often containing much carbonate, and therefore effervescing with acids, easily fused by heat to a clear liquid, very soluble in water, less in alcohol. Used for removing silver stains in the form of “cyanogen soap,” but very dangerous, as a cut or scratch may cause absorption, and even the unbroken skin, according to Allen, may absorb enough to cause symptoms. Its aqueous solution decomposes spontaneously into formiate of potassium, ammonia, and a brown substance. Its taste is bitter and acrid, causing constriction and a burning heat in the throat. It is very strongly alkaline. Distilled with dilute acids it gives off all its HCN. It easily responds to the other tests. In a case of poisoning investigated by Dr. Bernays, a piece of potassium cyanide was found in the deceased’s mouth, which was much inflamed by its acridity. The alkali being strong, and the acid weak, cyanide of potassium has most of the effects of an alkaline irritant.

The potassium may be found by incinerating a portion of the substance and testing for it in the ash. Taylor (Med. Jurisprudence) improperly says that the salt itself (cyanide of potassium) may be recovered from the organs by incinerating them in close vessels and treating the ash with water. I have already mentioned that cyanide would be formed in this way from the organic matters themselves, even if not originally present.

B. MERCURIC CYANIDE, Hg(CN)_{2}. Of all metals mercury has most affinity for HCN, mercuric oxide decomposing other cyanides, even Prussian blue, and dissolving readily, as we have seen, in free HCN, or in alkaline cyanides. Hence if a compound of mercury have been given medicinally, the prussic acid will be found in the stomach as mercuric cyanide, which is easily soluble in water, neutral to test paper, quite inodorous, and extremely poisonous. It is not officially recognised in any Pharmacopœia, except the French; has been occasionally used in medicine instead of mercuric chloride, which it resembles in action, but has the advantage of not being incompatible with alkalies and organic matters (Royle’s Mat. Med., 6th ed.). It crystallizes in anhydrous four-sided obliquely-truncated white opaque prisms, with a disagreeable metallic taste, is permanent in the air, easily soluble in water, less in alcohol. It fails to respond to the silver nitrate (partially) or Prussian blue tests, and gives the sulphur test with difficulty. It is decomposed by distillation with hydrochloric acid, but only ⅔rds of the HCN pass over into the distillate, unless ammonium chloride be added (Roscoe and Schorlemmer’s Chemistry). Whenever HCN is looked for, it is safer to examine also for mercury, and, if found, to add a little hydrochloric acid and sulphuretted hydrogen to the original liquid, thereby precipitating mercuric sulphide (black) and liberating the HCN, which may be distilled off. If, however, excess of sulphuretted hydrogen has been inadvertently added, it would blacken silver nitrate, and hence the silver test would not be available, unless the solution was previously shaken with lead carbonate to remove the sulphide. But it would not affect the Prussian blue or sulphur tests, as sulphide of iron is soluble in hydrochloric acid. Mercuric cyanide also gives off all its HCN when distilled with iron filings or zinc dust, sulphuric acid, and water. This seems a better method.

Mercuric cyanide is said to be an irritant poison, and to be similar in its action to corrosive sublimate. Combination with mercury seems to mask the physiological action of HCN, just as it does its chemical action. The medicinal dose is 1/16th grain gradually increased to ½ grain, in pills or solution (Royle). 10 grains have proved fatal. By heat, when dry, it is broken up like silver cyanide into mercury and cyanogen.

C. CYANIDES OF THE HEAVY METALS, as zinc, lead, copper, &c. Silver cyanide has already been described. These are insoluble in water, inodorous, and probably, while intact, not poisonous. But they are decomposed by mineral acids, and, as the gastric juice is acid, they would more or less readily yield free HCN, with its usual odour and effects. The influence of the metal has also to be considered.

D. DOUBLE CYANIDES, derived from iron, cobalt, manganese, chromium, platinum, &c., are inodorous. Those of the alkalies and alkaline earths are alone soluble. The only common ones are ferro-and ferricyanide of potassium, the so-called yellow and red prussiates of potash. They are said to be merely purgative, not poisonous, but, from the comparative facility with which they yield HCN by acids, they cannot be considered safe. Soluble ferrocyanides give, with pure ferrous sulphate, a white precipitate turning blue in air; with ferric chloride a precipitate of Prussian blue; with cupric sulphate a maroon precipitate. Ferricyanide solutions give with ferrous salts a deep blue precipitate; with ferric salts a dark-brown coloration. These reactions would be applied to a filtered portion of the stomach contents. Prussian blue is ferric ferrocyanide mainly, but varies in composition: it is supposed to be inert.

Almen states (Chem. Centr. 1872, 439) that potassium ferrocyanide in solution decomposes at ordinary temperatures, especially if a little free acid be present, HCN being formed. Prussian blue only decomposes when warmed to 40° or 50° C. (therefore not in the body, C. G. S.), “hence the presence of HCN, if accompanied by ferrocyanide, is not a proof of poisoning.” But ferrocyanide is not in any Pharmacopœia, and is not administered medicinally. Yet, to answer a possible question, a known fraction of the original substance might be extracted with water, and tested as above. The same observations apply to ferricyanide.

When ferro-or ferricyanides are distilled with moderately strong sulphuric acid, a portion of the contained HCN passes over; in fact, this is the common process for preparing prussic acid. The iron remains behind in the retort, in combination with potassium and the rest of the cyanogen. If ferric hydrate —“ferri peroxidum humidum”), or ferrous sulphate and potash, have been administered as antidotes to HCN, Prussian blue might be formed in the stomach. It would then show a blue colour, either by itself or on addition of an acid, and blue particles under the microscope, if in sufficient quantity. In this case the HCN left in the stomach would have been rendered innocuous, and the prussic acid which had actually caused the death would be found free in the blood, &c. The stomach contents might then show no HCN, either by odour or distillation, as Prussian blue is inodorous, and not easily decomposed by dilute acids. With alkalies it turns brown, giving ferric hydrate and an alkaline ferrocyanide.

Ludwig and Maushner (Chem. Centr. 1881, 43), in a case of poisoning, discovered a quantity of potassium ferrocyanide in the body. This was removed by slightly acidulating and carefully precipitating by ferric chloride. The filtrate, distilled with tartaric acid, yielded much HCN. The sample of cyanide of potassium, which had probably caused death, was afterwards found to contain a large proportion of ferrocyanide.

E. SULPHONCYANIDES (Thiocyanates). Those of the alkalies and alkaline earths are soluble and colourless; ferric sulphocyanide is soluble, and intense blood-red (sulphur test); other sulphocyanides are mostly insoluble. They are all inodorous, poisonous in moderate quantities, and are not officinal in any Pharmacopœia. Distilled with acids they break up, HCN being found in the distillate. It has been mentioned already that ammonium sulphide, produced by putrefaction, may combine with any HCN present to form ammonium sulphocyanide; therefore, if the matters to be examined are alkaline, and putrefaction has commenced, Allen (Commerc. Org. Anal., 1879, art. HCN) recommends us to digest with alcohol, filter, evaporate to dryness on a water bath, redissolve in a little water, filter again, and test the filtrate with ferric chloride after just acidulating with hydrochloric acid: the well-known blood-red colour will result (see “Sulphur Test”). But the ordinary distillation with tartaric or sulphuric acid would in this case also detect the HCN, though the whole might not pass into the distillate.

Sulphocyanide of mercury is the toy called “Pharaoh’s Serpent.” A case of poisoning by it is recorded.

It is important to notice that traces of sulphocyanide are naturally present in the saliva. If this salt be found, the question will occur, how much could be accounted for by the saliva? Carpenter (Princ. of Human Physiol.) quotes Harley to the effect that the average daily secretion from the salivary glands is 1 or 2 pounds: other observers have stated that it varies greatly. The secretion itself is said to contain, in 1000 parts, one part (Frehrichs), or 0·6 part (Jacubowitsch), or even 0·3 part (Oehl), of potassium sulphocyanide; that is, 4·2 to 7 grains per pound, equivalent to from 1 to 2 grains of HCN, or 2 to 4 grains if 2 pounds of saliva were secreted. This would be a serious matter but for the fact that, whether from decomposition by the gastric juice or otherwise, or from its passing out of the stomach as it passes in, it is certain that no such quantity is ever found naturally in the stomach, not more than a minute trace being ever given by the processes, unless hydrocyanic acid, in one of its forms, has actually been administered.

Cyanide of cadmium, and some of its double salts, are sparingly soluble. Double cyanide of silver and potassium is soluble and crystallizable. It is the salt used in electro-plating, and, as commonly met with, smells strongly of potassium cyanide. Zinc-potassium cyanide has been used medicinally: it occurs in beautiful crystals, inodorous when dry, but having a faint odour of HCN in solution.

The other cyanides are rare, and their physiological action is unrecorded. Cyanic acid and cyanates are said not to be poisonous.

Oil of Bitter Almonds.—The crude oil contains, as we have seen, 8 to 15 per cent, of HCN. Dissolved in spirit it forms “essence of almonds,” and is exceedingly poisonous, having caused thirty-one deaths in four years (Taylor). Two drachms of the oil has killed a man in seventeen minutes (Lancet, 1868, p. 447), two ounces caused death immediately. The odour of almonds is always distinct in the stomach.

The oil can be freed from HCN, but then does not keep so well, and is much more costly. Its sp. gr. is 1·049; it boils at 356° F. The crude oil is yellow: with concentrated sulphuric acid it gives a crimson-red colour, and on diluting a yellow emulsion. We may estimate the amount of HCN in it by shaking with water, separating, adding dilute potash to the aqueous liquid, and testing it with standard silver solution as described under “Silver Test.” The other tests may also be used to prove the presence of HCN; the guaiacum and copper paper being specially convenient.

A case of poisoning by bitter almonds is reported in the “South Australian Register” for August 6th, 1879. A female child (whose age is not stated) ate a dozen of them, freshly taken from the tree, and died in three hours. The symptoms described are pain, coma, and convulsions.

Antidotes to HCN are generally useless since the death is so sudden. A moderately dilute solution of an alkali, such as potash, lime or washing soda, along with a little ferrous sulphate, would render harmless so much of the poison as was still in the stomach unabsorbed. As already mentioned, this would cause a little difficulty in the chemical analysis. Ammonia acts as an antidote by opposing the depressant action of HCN. Chlorine water has been used: this converts the HCN into ammonium chloride, carbon monoxide and dioxide, and a little cyanogen chloride.

Medicinal uses.—Its primary action is on the cerebrospinal nerves. It is employed externally, largely diluted, to allay neuralgia and itching of the skin, and to relieve earache (not more than two drops of B. P. acid at a time)[24]: it must not come in contact with abrasions, or it might be absorbed and produce poisoning symptoms. Internally, it allays dyspepsia and the irritant effects of capsicum, &c. (Royle). Safe dose internally two to six minims of the B. P. 2 per cent. acid, suspended if there is any constriction of the throat (Farquharson’s Therapeutics).

Fatal dose.—Smallest recorded (Med. Gaz. 35, p. 896); twenty grains of Scheele’s acid, fatal in twenty minutes, equal to fifty grains of B. P. 2 per cent. acid, equal to one grain of anhydrous prussic acid. Largest dose with recovery (Lancet, 1854, January 14), one drachm (sixty grains) of Scheele’s acid, but in this case energetic remedies were at once applied. Average fatal dose of 2 per cent. acid, thirty minims (Royle’s Mat. Med., Dr. Harley, 6th ed.).

Symptoms.—These vary with the dose, &c. A large quantity kills in two to five minutes, though insensibility may ensue in a few seconds. But patients may survive for twenty minutes, or even for an hour; and may continue in imminent danger for several hours, and yet recover (Guy and Ferrier, Forens. Med., 1881). Many cases have occurred of voluntary acts, such as concealing or throwing away the bottle, having been performed after fatal doses had been swallowed (Ibid, p. 600). In animals, according to Mr. Nunneley, there is usually a peculiar plaintive cry, but not in man, though there may be a call for assistance. Convulsions, and involuntary evacuation of fæces or urine, may or may not occur. Large doses kill by cardiac syncope; smaller ones by paralysis of the respiratory centre, or, if gradual, by impeded oxidation of the blood (Farquharson’s Therapeutics). Other symptoms are, dilatation of pupils, muscular prostration, deep convulsive breathing at long intervals, quick feeble irregular pulse, spasmodic closure of the jaws and clenching of the hands (Taylor). Breathing sometimes stertorous (Christison, Ed. Month. Journal, February, 1850, p. 97. Reg. v. Burroughs, Cent. Crim. Court, February, 1857). Vomiting occasional, or foaming at the mouth.

Post-mortem appearances.—Not characteristic (Farquharson; Guy and Ferrier). Putrefaction not accelerated (Taylor). The veins contain dark fluid blood: the right side of the heart is gorged (Harley). There may or may not be congestion and reddening of stomach and intestines, or of the brain. On the whole, the appearances are those of asphyxia.[25] The odour should be sought for in all parts, and as soon as possible the organs should be shut up in stoppered jars, or well-corked and sealed bottles, and sent at once for analysis.

The symptoms and post-mortem appearances of poisoning by Cyanide of Potassium are the same as those of prussic acid, except that:—

1. Convulsions are more common.

2. Owing to the irritant action of the alkali, the stomach is reddened.

3. The contents are alkaline.

The fatal dose is less than five grains, but Taylor mentions a case of recovery after nearly one ounce of the commercial cyanide, which may, however, have contained much carbonate.

Hydrocyanic acid is not, in the strict sense, a cumulative poison; “but doses that exceed the proper medicinal limit may happen to prove fatal though similar previous ones have appeared to be harmless, in consequence of a change in the body itself.” (Guy and Ferrier’s Forensic Medicine, 1881, p. 606.)

In the trial of George Ball for poisoning his mother with prussic acid, at Lewes, July, 1860 (previously reported), the question arose as to the difference between minims and drops. A minim of water is supposed to weigh a grain: if the fluid is heavier than water, it weighs more than a grain; if lighter, it weighs less. But a drop is quite an indefinite quantity: it is affected, not only by the specific gravity, but by the cohesion of the fluid, by the shape and size of the vessel, the manner of pouring, and the temperature. I have made some experiments which show the irregularity. (See also Woodman and Tidy’s Forensic Medicine, p. 456.)

┌────────────────────────────────────┬───────────┬────────┬────────┐ │ │ │ │Measured│ │ │ │ No. of │ in │ │ Capacity of Bottle. │ Liquid. │ Drops. │Minims. │ ├────────────────────────────────────┼───────────┼────────┼────────┤ │(Stoppered) 6 fluid oz. │ Water │ 117 │ 180 │ │ Do. (another observer)│ Do. │ 90 │ 120 │ │ 1½ fluid oz. │ Do. │ 47 │ 100 │ │(Corked) 6 do. │ Do. │ 36 │ 100 │ │Same capacity, dropped with the cork│ Do. │37 to 41│ 100 │ │ (Stoppered) 6 fluid oz. │ Rectified │ 243 │ 120 │ │ │ Spirit │ │ │ └────────────────────────────────────┴───────────┴────────┴────────┘

Proving that while a drop may be estimated at about 1½ to 2 minims (a good deal more than the usual supposition, the two terms being often regarded as synonymous), yet the inconstancy is so great that it is absolutely imperative, in using powerful medicines, to prescribe exact measurement, and not such a precarious process as dropping.

As to the period after death during which HCN may be detected, Allen (Comm. Org. Anal.) asserts that its detection is rarely possible after more than twenty-four hours. This is astonishing, as Casper separated more than 18 milligrammes from a body eight days after death; Sokoloff detected it in hounds sixty days after; Dragendorff after four weeks in a dog, after eight or ten days in man. Reichardt (Arch. Pharm. 3, 19, 204) found it in a body two months after death—in the organs, but not in the urine. In the Tawell trial, also, the interval was considerable.

Casper states in his Handbook (vol. iii., illustrative cases of HCN) that Schauenstein (one of the Prussian official chemists), twenty-six hours after death, found no HCN in the stomach, but a considerable amount of formic acid, the result of its metamorphosis. We know that strong HCN, exposed to light, decomposes into formate of ammonium, which, by distillation with a dilute acid, would give formic acid in the distillate. That such a change should occur so rapidly in a dilute solution, and in the darkness of the body, is improbable. It would be well, however, that formic acid should be looked for in the distillate thus:—

Carefully neutralize a measured portion with pure soda or potash; evaporate on the water-bath to dryness. The alkaline formate will be left in white crystals if present, together with the cyanide, which will not crystallize, but remain as a deliquescent mass. Dissolve in a little water, and divide into three equal portions.

(1.) To the first add silver nitrate in slight excess. Cyanide of silver will precipitate, formate will remain in solution, if not too concentrated. Filter, if possible. On boiling, if any blackening happens from reduction of the silver, formic acid is probably present. Acetic acid does not reduce silver nitrate.

(2.) To the second add dilute neutral ferric chloride (a solution of iron-alum answers admirably). A red-brown colour, removed by a drop of hydrochloric acid, indicates either acetic or formic acid.

(3.) Evaporate the third portion to dryness, and ignite gently in a closed crucible. Formate and acetate will be turned into carbonate, while cyanide will remain unchanged if air be excluded. If then effervescence take place on treating the residue with a little hydrochloric acid, it is a confirmation of the presence of formic or acetic acid. The first test will have revealed which it is.

Many animal substances, when distilled with strong acids, do give acetic and formic acids, but they do not act thus with dilute acids. Yet a stomach will usually yield a little acetic acid from the food having turned sour.

If formic acid be present, it will probably have proceeded from the decomposition of HCN. Then the reduced silver obtained in the first test should be weighed, and calculated into formic acid, and also into hydrocyanic acid (108 parts of silver = 46 parts formic acid, or 27 parts HCN). The result may be stated thus:—

“Hydrocyanic acid actually found,—-- grains. Formic acid found,—-- grains. If this had proceeded from the decomposition of hydrocyanic acid, it would correspond to an additional amount of—-- grains of hydrocyanic acid.”

It is needless to observe that the mere finding of formic acid would be no proof of the administration of HCN, unless strong corroborative evidence were at hand.

On the whole, we must always try, and we may often hope, to find HCN if given, either free, as cyanide, or as sulphocyanide, even after months have elapsed.

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