Instead of distilling the liquor by heat, I have often treated it with ether; this latter decanted and submitted to spontaneous evaporation leaves the nicotine.
Everything tends to show that nicotine may be detected by other processes. Thus by treating the digestive canal with absolute alcohol, with the addition of a little soda, it would be dissolved, and by the reaction of the soda, a soap would be formed with the fatty matter, which would set free the nicotine; it would then only remain to distil it by heat, after having evaporated to dryness. Perhaps, also, it might be separated by acting on the tissues with pure soda or potash, then evaporating to dryness and heating it in closed vessels.
3. It is sufficiently easy to prove the presence of nicotine in the liver and other organs after it has been absorbed.—In 1839 when I had shown that poisons after having been absorbed might be extracted from the organs where they had been carried with the blood, I insisted so strongly on the necessity of examining these organs with a view to the detection of poisons, that it has now become the custom to proceed in this way. How often does it happen, that, in consequence of repeated vomiting and action of the bowels, and also from complete absorption having taken place, there remains no trace of the poison in the digestive canal? Moreover, it is evident, that, in getting the poison from the organs to which it has been carried by absorption, we obtain, in reality, that portion of the poison which has been the cause of death, unless it be shown that it was carried to those organs after death by absorption. M. Stas has conformed, most wisely, to this precept. For my part, I could not, in my researches, neglect this important branch of the investigation. The livers of those animals which I had poisoned with twelve or fifteen drops of nicotine, when submitted to one or other of the processes I have described, furnished me with appreciable quantities of this alkali. I scarcely obtained any from {25} the blood contained in the heart, but I had only operated upon a few grammes. Moreover, experience teaches that a great number of poisons absorbed rapidly pass from the blood into the organs, and most especially into the liver.
It may be readily conceived that the research for absorbed nicotine might be fruitless in those cases where death was occasioned by only a few drops of this body; but then the presence of the alkali may be detected in the digestive canal.
Gentlemen, after results such as those obtained by M. Stas and myself, society may feel satisfied. Without doubt intelligent and skilful criminals, intent on puzzling the Chemists, will sometimes have recourse to very active poisons, but little known to the community at large, and difficult to detect; but science is on the alert to surmount all difficulties. Penetrating to the recesses of our organs, she extracts evidence of the crime, and furnishes one of the great elements of conviction against the guilty. Do we not know that at the present time poisonings by morphine, brucine, strychnine, nicotine, conicine, hydrocyanic acid, and many other vegetable substances which were formerly believed to be inaccessible to our means of investigation, may be discovered and recognised in a manner to be perfectly characteristic?
During my stay at Mons, and consequently since the deposit of this memoir, I have had at my disposal the complete and remarkable Report of M. Stas, and I have satisfied myself:—
1st. That this Chemist has obtained nicotine from the tongue, from the stomach, and liquids contained in it, and also from the liver and lungs of Gustave Fougnies.
2ndly. That he also obtained nicotine by properly treating the boards of the dining-room where Gustave died, although these boards had been washed with warm water, with oil, and with soap.—Repertoire de Pharmacie.
The Count Hippolyte Visarte de Bocarmé confessed his guilt, and was executed at Mons.