Medical Evidence for Defense
Then came the evidence for the defense, rebutting the presumption that death was caused by arsenic. First in order being Dr. Tidy, the examiner for forensic medicine at the London Hospital, and also, like Dr. Stevenson, employed as an analyst by the Home Office. This witness stated that, within a few years, close upon forty cases of arsenical poisoning had come before him, which enabled him to indicate the recurring and distinctive indications formed in such cases.
Dr. Tidy describes the symptoms of arsenic poisoning as purging and vomiting in a very excessive degree; a burning pain in the abdomen, more marked in the pit of the stomach, and increased considerably by pressure, usually associated with pain in the calves of the legs; then, after a certain interval, suffusion of the eyes—the eyes fill with tears; great irritability about the eyelids; frequent intolerance of light.
Dr. Tidy added that there were three symptoms, such as cramps, tenesmus, straining, more or less present, but the prominent symptoms were those he had mentioned, especially the sickness, violent, incessant sickness, and that poisoning by arsenic was extremely simple to detect. Further, that he (Dr. Tidy) had known cases where one or more of the four symptoms mentioned had been absent, but he had never known a case in which all four symptoms were absent; and stated that he had followed every detail of the Maybrick case so far as he could, and had read all the depositions before the coroner and magistrate, and the account of the vomiting did not agree with his description of excessive and persistent vomiting, and was certainly not that kind of vomiting that takes place in a typical case of arsenical poisoning.
Dr. Tidy further stated that, taking the whole of the symptoms, they undoubtedly were not those of arsenical poisoning, nor did they point to such, but were perfectly consistent with death from gastro-enteritis, not caused by arsenical poisoning at all; and that, had he been called upon to advise, he should have said it was undoubtedly not arsenical poisoning, and that his view had been very much strengthened, to use his own words, by the result of the post-mortem, which distinctly pointed away from arsenic.
Then there was the evidence, in the same direction, of Dr. Macnamara, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, and its representative on the General Medical Council of the Kingdom, which is summed up in the general question put to him and his answer:
Question: Now, bringing your best judgment to bear on the matter—you having been present at the whole of this trial and heard the evidence—in your opinion, was this death from arsenical poisoning?
Answer: Certainly not.
In cross-examination Dr. Macnamara stated that, to the best of his judgment, Mr. Maybrick died of gastro-enteritis, not connected with arsenical poisoning, and which might have been caused by the wetting at the Wirrall races.
Dr. Paul, professor of medical jurisprudence at University College, Liverpool, and pathologist at the Royal Infirmary, stated he had made and assisted at something like three or four thousand post-mortem examinations, and that the symptoms in the present case agreed with cases of gastro-enteritis pure and simple; that the finding of the arsenic in the body, in the quantity mentioned in the evidence, was quite consistent with the case of a man who had taken arsenic medicinally, but who had left it off for some time, even for several months.