Witness: You forget the tetanic complications. (Roars of laughter.)
The Attorney-General: If I understand right, then, it stands thus—the sexual excitement produces epilepsy, and the chancre superadds tetanic complications?
Witness: I say that the results of sexual excitement produce epilepsy.
Mr. Baron Alderson said he had heard some person in court clap his hands. On an occasion on which a man was being tried for his life such a display was most indecent.
Examination continued: I cannot remember any fatal case of poisoning by strychnia in which so long a period as an hour and a half intervened between the taking of the poison and the appearance of the first symptoms.
What would be the effect of morphia given a day or two previously? Would it not retard the action of the poison?—No; I have seen opium bring on convulsions very nearly similar.
What quantity?—A grain and a half. From my experience, I think that if morphia had been given a day or two before it would have accelerated the action of the strychnia. I have seen opium bring on epileptic convulsions. If this were a case of poisoning by strychnia, I should suppose that as both opium and strychnia produce congestion of the brain, the two would act together, and would have a more speedy effect. If congestion of the brain was coming on when morphia was given to Cook on the Sunday and Monday nights, it might have increased rather than allayed it.
But the gentlemen who examined the body say that there was no congestion after death?—But Dr. Bamford says there was.
You stick to Dr. Bamford?—Yes, I do; because he was a man of experience—could judge much better than younger men, and was not so likely to be mistaken.
But Dr. Bamford said that Cook died of apoplexy; do you think this was apoplexy?—No, it was not.