"Is Dr. Fisher a skilful man?"
"Yes."
"As skilful as you are yourself?"
This was a hard question, but with Dr. Fisher present, only one answer was possible.
"Certainly, but we are all liable to make a mistake."
This was a bad effort to help his cause, for Mr. Bliss quickly interposed.
"Even you are liable to make a mistake, eh?"
"Of course, but in this instance I saw more of the case than Dr.
Fisher did."
"Still, Dr. Fisher was present for several minutes before this girl died, and though you suggested that she had been poisoned, and proposed taking some action to save her from the poison, he disagreed with you so entirely that he made no such effort. Is that right?"
"Well, there was very little that he could have done anyway. It was too late. The drug had gone too far for the stomach-pump to be efficacious; the atropine had had no beneficial result, we had no means of applying a magnetic battery, and no time to get one. Artificial respiration was what I proposed, whilst waiting for a battery, but Dr. Fisher thought it a useless experiment, in presence of the diphtheria. He offered to perform tracheotomy, but as I considered that the respiratory centres had been paralyzed by morphine, I could see no advantage in that."