The amount of arsenic recovered and produced in court was in quantity sufficient to produce death. Some time after the analytical report was made to the coroner, it was learned that an embalming fluid, highly arsenical in character, had been used upon the body by the undertaker at the time of preparation for burial. No injection of this embalming fluid was practised, but cloths wrung out in the fluid were laid upon the face and chest, and were kept constantly wet therewith during a period of many hours. In all about two quarts of embalming fluid were so used. Its composition appeared to be a strongly acidified solution of sodium arsenite and zinc sulphate. Only the arsenic and zinc were determined quantitatively, and they were found to be, zinc (metallic), 1·978 per cent., and arsenic (metallic), 1·365 per cent. by weight. An amount of this fluid measuring 15·7 c.c. would thus contain a weight of arsenic equal to that actually recovered from the body.
Extended medical testimony was offered by the prosecution, tending to show that, under the given circumstances, no fluid of any kind could have reached the stomach through the nose or mouth after death, thus anticipating what the defence afterwards claimed, that the undertaker was responsible for the arsenic discovered in the remains.
In order to gather further light upon the possibility of cadaveric imbibition of embalming fluid through the unbroken skin, test was made for zinc in the heart and stomach, and distinct traces of the metal were found in each instance. That at least a portion of the arsenic found in the body was due to post-mortem causes was thus distinctly proven. A weighed portion (62 grms.) of the stomach and contents was then most carefully analysed quantitatively for both zinc and arsenic with the following results:—Arsenic, 0·0648 grm., and zinc, 0·0079 grm. Bearing in mind the relative quantities of the two metals in the embalming fluid, it will be seen that the arsenic found in the 62 grms. of the stomach was nearly twelve times larger than it should have been to have balanced the zinc which was also present. This fact, together with the discovery of crystals of white arsenic in the stomach, constituted the case for the prosecution, so far as the chemical evidence was concerned.
The defence made an unsuccessful effort to show that the crystals of the tri-oxide originated from the spontaneous evaporation of the embalming fluid. The prosecution met this point by proving that such fluid had been abundantly experimented upon by exposure to a very low temperature during an interval of several months, and also by spontaneous evaporation with a view of testing that very question, and that the results had in every case been negative. Special importance was given these experiments, because of the well-known separation of octahedral crystals during the spontaneous evaporation of a hydrochloric acid solution of the white oxide, it having also appeared that, in the manufacture of the embalming fluid, the arsenic was used as white arsenic.
A very strong point was finally raised for the defence by the inability of the expert on the side of the prosecution to state positively whether or not an embalming fluid of the above composition would diffuse as a whole through dead tissue, or its several parts would be imbibed at different rates of speed, the zinc portion becoming arrested by albuminoid material and being therefore outstripped by the arsenic, or vice versa. The prisoner was ultimately acquitted.
In a case which occurred in the Western States of America, there was good reason for believing that arsenic had been introduced into the corpse of a man after his decease. With regard to the imbibition of arsenic thus introduced, Orfila[780] says:—“I have often introduced into the stomach (as well as the rectum) of the corpses of men and dogs 2 to 3 grms. of arsenious acid, dissolved in from 400 to 500 grms. of water, and have examined the different viscera at the end of eight, ten, or twenty days. Constantly I have recognised the effects of cadaveric imbibition. Sections of the liver or other organs which touch the digestive canal, carefully cut and analysed, furnished arsenic, which could not be obtained sensibly (or not at all) from sections which had not been in contact with this canal. If the corpse remained long on the back after arsenious acid had been introduced into the stomach, I could obtain this metal from the left half of the diaphragm and from the inferior lobe of the left lung, whilst I did not obtain it from other portions of the diaphragm nor from the right lung.” Dr. Reece has also made some experiments on the imbibition of arsenic after death. He injected solutions of arsenious acid into the stomach of various warm-blooded animals, and found at various periods arsenic, not alone in the intestinal canal, but also in the spleen, liver, and kidneys.
[780] Op. cit., t. i. p. 309.
§ 742. Analysis of Wall-Paper for Arsenic.—The separation of arsenic from paper admits of great variety of manipulation. A quick special method is as follows:—The paper is saturated with chlorate of potash solution, dried, set on fire in a suitable plate, and instantly covered with a bell-glass. The ash is collected, pulverised, and exhausted with cold water, which has previously thoroughly cleansed the plate and bell-glass; the arsenic in combination with the potash is dissolved, whilst oxides of chromium, copper, aluminium, tin, and lead remain in the insoluble portion.[781]