Q, Are there not many things which kill animals almost instantaneously, that will have no detrimental or noxious effect upon a human subject; spirits, for instance, occur to me?
A. I apprehend a great deal depends upon the mode of experiment; no man is fit to make one, but those who have made many, and paid considerable attention to all the circumstances that relate to experiments, it is a common experiment which I believe seldom fails, and it is in the mouth of every body, that a little brandy will kill a cat: I have made the experiment, and have killed several cats, but it is a false experiment; in all those cases where it kills the cat, it kills the cat by getting into her lungs, not into her stomach, because, if you convey the same quantity of brandy, or three times as much into the stomach, in such a way as the lungs shall not be affected, the cat will not die; now in those experiments that are made by forcing an animal to drink, there are two operations going on, one is a refusing the liquor, by the animal, its kicking and working with its throat, to refuse it, the other is a forcing the liquor upon the animal, and there are very few operations of that kind, but some of the liquor gets into the lungs. I have known it from experience.
Q. If you had been called upon to dissect a body, suspected to have died of poison, should you or not have thought it necessary to have pursued your search through the guts?
A. Certainly.
Q. Do you not apprehend that you would have been more likely to receive information from thence than any other part of the frame?
A. That is the track of the poison, and I should certainly have followed that track through.
Q. You have heard of the froth issuing from Sir Theodosius’s mouth, a minute or two before he died, is that peculiar to a man dying of poison, or is it not very common in many other complaints?
A. I fancy it is a general effect, of people dying in what you may call health, in an apoplexy, or epilepsy, in all sudden deaths, where the person was a moment before that in perfect health.
Q. Have you ever had an opportunity of seeing such appearances upon such subjects?
A. Hundreds of times.