Dr. Sones had nothing to do with the physiological part of the question, and Mr. Mole was dependent mainly for the chemical side of the business on Sones. When Mr. Crowe started on his annual holiday, the various poisonous alkaloids in the fungi had just been isolated by our chemist, and it only awaited a series of experiments on animals to verify the facts which had been discussed relative to their operation. During his absence Dr. Sones had prepared a considerable quantity of these deadly poisons for the use of his friend. The porter at St. Bernard’s had collected a sufficient number of animals of various ages and sizes for Mr. Mole, so that nothing was wanting but the remaining links in the chain of proof to settle once and for all the great question of the causes of mushroom poisoning. One terrible fact greatly impressed Dr. Sones as the result of these determinations: namely, that if the poisonous alkaloid became readily procurable, nothing would be easier than for a criminal to prepare a dish in such a manner that the eater thereof would die, without much chance of detection, owing to the bad reputation of the fungi for terminating life suddenly. He laboured, therefore, long and anxiously to find some reagent or means of detecting the presence of the different alkaloids he had discovered which were capable of causing death in the human species; but hitherto without success.
Dr. Sones had bought his practice of an aged surgeon who had occupied the house over fifty years. He often showed his friends a curious collection of old drugs and medicines that were in actual use in pharmacy in the time of his predecessor. There was a bottle labelled “Moss off a dead man’s skull,” but it was not known how or for what complaint it was administered. There was another horrible mess called “Oil of earth-worms,” besides “Oil of bricks,” and “Powdered tapeworms,” actually administered for those parasites on the similia similibus principle. “Cobwebs,” “Crabs’ eyes,” and “Crabs’ claws,” were at that time regularly used in medicine, the two latter being merely chalk, sold under those names. If one were disposed to laugh at the therapeutic folly of the past generation of doctors, Sones would remind you that quite as absurd and disgusting things have been “strongly recommended by the faculty” in the present day. A prominent medical journal only recently had several articles on the virtues of an “Essence of Cockroaches” of all loathsome remedies! What is there that has not at one time been either a deity or a drug? One of these old bottles contained a preparation from some Russian fungi, which he had not hitherto noticed, and in that he found an important clue to his tests.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
MR. CROWE AT GRANADA.
He that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun,
Himself is his own dungeon.
—Milton.
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?