Such was the deduction Dr. Stevenson arrived at, necessitating the assumption that arsenic was equally distributed in the intestines and liver, whereas it is within the personal knowledge of eminent men (such as Drs. Tidy and Macnamara) that arsenic may be found after death in one portion of the intestines, and not a trace of it in any other part. That in arsenical poisoning the arsenic may be found in the rectum and in the duodenum, and in no other part, is beyond dispute, and the fallacy of Dr. Stevenson’s process must be self-evident.
The witnesses for the prosecution themselves supply the proof of the unequal distribution of the arsenic in the liver.
Mr. Davies calculates the quantity in the whole liver as 0.130 grain.
Dr. Stevenson, in his first experiment, puts it at 0.312 grain, and in his second experiment at 0.278 grain; in other words, Dr. Stevenson finds double in one experiment and considerably more than double in another experiment, the quantity found by Mr. Davies, and it is upon this glaring miscalculation and discrepancy that the case for the prosecution was made to rest, and Mrs. Maybrick was convicted.
But with all this miscalculation the approximate amount of arsenic can only be swelled up to four-tenths of a grain, less than one-fourth of a fatal dose, and it was demonstrated that every other part of the body, urine, bile, stomach, contents of stomach, heart, lungs, spleen, fluid from mouth, and even bones, were all found to be free from arsenic.
Recapitulation Of Legal Points
The legal points of the case may thus conveniently be recapitulated under the following short heads:
There was no conclusive evidence that Mr. Maybrick died from other than natural causes (the word “conclusive” being used in the sense of free from doubt).
There was no conclusive evidence that he died from arsenical poisoning.