[229]. Nouvelles Experiences sur les Contre-Poisons de l’Arsenic. Par Casimir Renault. A. Paris. A. 9, pp. 119.
[230]. A belief in this mode of poisoning appears to be of very ancient origin. Calpurnius Bestia was said by Pliny (Hist. Nat. Lib. 27. Cap. 2.) to have been particularly skilled in such a process, and to have murdered many of his wives when asleep, by bathing the parts of generation with the juice of Aconite; and Dr. Gordon Smith, in his work on Forensic Medicine, relates, on the authority of Schenckius, the tragical death of Ladislas, or Lancelot, surnamed the Victorious and the Liberal, who succeeded to the contested throne of Naples in 1386, and died at the age of thirty-eight in great pain, in consequence of having been poisoned by the daughter of a physician, of whom he was passionately fond, per concubitum. Sir Thomas Brown, in his Vulgar Errors, alludes to an ancient story of an “Indian king that sent unto Alexander a fair woman, fed with Aconites, and other poisons, with the intent that she either by converse or copulation might destroy him.”
[232]. Philosophical Transactions. 1811.
[233]. M. Orfila observes that there are many cases of poisoning by arsenious acid introduced into the stomach, in which we are unable to discover the slightest appearance of erosion or inflammation in the alimentary canal; such cases are recorded by Chaussier, Etmuller, Marc, Sallin, and Renault.
[234]. We well remember performing some experiments at Cambridge, many years ago, upon mildew, which as far as they went corroborate this assertion of Jaegar, for its propagation was not prevented by arsenic. See also “The effects of Arsenical fumes,” vol. I, p. 332.
[235]. See Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journ. for January 1, 1811.
[236]. Elements of Juridical Medicine, p. 76.
[237]. Prestwich on Poisons.
[238]. Pharmacologia, Edit. 5. vol. ii. p. 89.