“No, I neither perceived nor suspected anything abnormal.”
“Is that not rather remarkable? I realize that poisoning would be the last thing that you would be looking for or expecting. But when it occurred, is it not a little strange that you did not recognize the symptoms?”
“Not at all,” replied Dimsdale. “There was nothing to recognize. The classical symptoms of arsenic poisoning were entirely absent. You will remember that Sir Robert Detling had no more suspicion than I had.”
“What are the classical symptoms, as you call them, of arsenic poisoning?”
“The recognized symptoms—which are present in the immense majority of cases—are acute abdominal pain and tenderness, intense thirst, nausea, vomiting and purging; the symptoms, in fact, of extreme irritation of the stomach and intestines. But in the case of deceased, these symptoms were entirely absent. There was, in my opinion, nothing whatever in his appearance or symptoms to suggest arsenic poisoning. His condition appeared in no way different from what I had known it to be on several previous occasions; just a variation for the worse of his ordinary ill-health.”
“You do not doubt that arsenic poisoning was really the cause of his death?”
“The analysis seems to put the matter beyond question; otherwise—I mean apart from the analysis—I would not have entertained the idea of arsenic poisoning for a moment.”
“But you do not dispute the cause of death?”
“No. Arsenic is extraordinarily variable in its effects, as Dr. Randall mentioned, both on the dead body and on the living. Very anomalous cases of arsenic poisoning have been mistaken, during life, for opium poisoning.”
The coroner wrote down the answer and having glanced over his notes, asked: