Attorney-General
Then the next thing that is said is that the heart in this case was empty. In the animals Mr. Nunneley and Dr. Letheby have operated upon I think the heart has been found full. I do not think that applies to all the cases; I think they make some exceptions; and, as I said at the outset, it is a remarkable fact connected with the history of this particular poison, that you never can rely upon the precise form or order which the symptoms before death and the appearances after it will assume. There are only certain great, leading, marked characteristic features—the collateral incidents are capable of infinite variety. We have here the main marked characteristic features, and we have, what is more, collateral incidents similar to the cases in which the administration of strychnia and the fact that death was caused by it are beyond the possibility of dispute. In the very evidence which has been adduced of two cases of poisoning, Mrs. Smyth’s and the Glasgow girl, in both the heart had been found contracted and emptied; and it is obvious to any one who reflects for a single moment that the question whether the heart shall be found congested or the lungs congested must depend upon the immediate cause of death, and we know that in cases of tetanus death may result from more than one cause. All the muscles of the body are subject to the exciting action of this powerful poison, but no one can tell in what order those muscles will be affected, or where the poisonous influence will put forth the fulness of its power. If it act upon the respiratory muscles, and arrest the play of the lungs, and with it the breathing of atmospheric air, the result will be that the heart will be left full; but if some spasm seizes on the heart, contracting it and expelling from it the blood that it contains, and so produces death, why the result will be that the heart will be found empty, and the other vessels gorged with blood. So that you have never perfect certainty as to how those symptoms will manifest themselves after death; but that is again put forward as if the fact of the heart having been found empty is a conclusive fact against death having in this case taken place from strychnia. Yet those men who came here to make those statements as witnesses under the sanction of scientific authority must have heard both those cases spoken to by the medical gentlemen who examined those two unfortunate patients after death, and who told us that in both cases the heart was found empty. That gets rid of that matter. And so again with regard to the congestion of the brain and other vessels the same observation applies. If instead of being killed by the action of the poison upon the respiratory muscles or by its action upon the heart, death is the result of a long series of paroxysms exhausting the vital power of the victim, then you expect to find the brain and other vessels congested by those series of convulsions and spasms. As death takes place from one or other of those causes, so will be the appearance of the heart, the brain, and the body after death. There is nothing, I say, in this for a single moment to negative the conclusion which you would otherwise arrive at from the symptoms which appeared in this man’s body at the time of his death and immediately afterwards—that those are the symptoms of tetanus of the strongest and most aggravated kind; that is a proposition about which, I think, you can entertain no doubt. If so, are they referable to tetanus of any other description? Certainly not; because, as Sir Benjamin Brodie told you, the course of the symptoms is marked by characteristics of unquestionable difference.
Attorney-General
Is it not then preposterous to contend that this was not a case of tetanus? And if every one of the distinctions they have attempted to set up I show you to have really nothing to do with the case (because I produce you at once an undoubted case in which the administration of strychnia is beyond the reach of question, in which those particular symptoms and appearances were manifested and observed) I get rid at once of all those vain, futile attempts to distinguish this case, either in its premonitory symptoms or in the appearances either before or upon post-mortem examination. I get rid of all those difficulties, and I come back to the symptoms which attended this unhappy man’s demise. I ask whether you can doubt that, when I have excluded all those cases of tetanic convulsions, epilepsy, and arachnitis, or angina pectoris, which occurred, you recollect, in a young girl after an attack of scarlet fever—in all human probability the scarlet fever had been thrown back upon the system, and had produced all those consequences—when I exclude all those cases, and then, lastly, exclude traumatic or idiopathic tetanus, what remains? The tetanus of strychnia, and the tetanus of strychnia only. I pray your attention to the cases of which evidence has been given, in which there was no question as to strychnia having been administered, there not being the shadow of a doubt about it, and in which the circumstances were so similar, and the symptoms so analogous, that I think you cannot hesitate to come to the conclusion that this was death by strychnia. Medical witnesses of the highest authority, both on the part of the Crown and on the part of the defence, agree that in the whole range of their experience and knowledge they know of no natural disease to which these remarkable symptoms can be referred. If that be so, and there is a known poison that will produce them, how strong, how cogent, how irresistible becomes the inference that to that poison, and to that poison alone, are those symptoms and this death to be ascribed!
Attorney-General
Nevertheless, gentlemen, on the other hand, the case is not without its difficulties; and I will not shrink from the discussion of them, nor from the candid recognition of these difficulties, so far as they in reality exist. Strychnia was not found in this body; and we have it, no doubt upon strong evidence, that in a variety of experiments which have been tried upon the bodies of animals killed by strychnia, strychnia has been detected by the tests which science places at the disposition of scientific men. If strychnia had been found, of course there would have been no difficulty, and we should have had none of the ingenious theories which gentlemen from a variety of parts have been brought forward to propound in this Court. The question for your consideration is, whether the absence of its detection leads conclusively to the view that this death could not have been caused by the administration of that poison. Now, in the first place, under what circumstances was the examination made of which Dr. Taylor and Dr. Rees have spoken? They tell you that when the stomach of this man was brought to them for the purpose of analysis, it was presented to them under the most unfavourable circumstances. They say that its contents had been lost, and that they had no opportunity of experimenting upon them. It is very true that those who put up the jar make a statement somewhat different. They say that the contents of the stomach were emptied into the jar, but there appears (at all events I will not put it higher than accident), by accident, to have been some spilling of the contents; and there is, I think, the clearest and most undeniable evidence of very considerable bungling in the way in which the stomach was cut, and the way in which it was emptied into the jar. It was cut from end to end, says Dr. Taylor. It was tied up at both ends; it had been turned inside out into the contents of the intestines, and lay there in a mass of fœculent matter, and was therefore in a condition the most unsatisfactory for analysis and experiment. It is very true that the witnesses upon the other side—Mr. Nunneley, Mr. Herapath, and Dr. Letheby—say that, no matter how contaminated or how mixed with impurities, they would have been able to ascertain the presence of strychnia in the stomach, if strychnia ever had been there. I own I should have more confidence in the testimony of those witnesses if their partiality and partisanship had not been so much marked as they are. I should have more confidence in the testimony of Mr. Herapath if he had not been constrained to admit to me a fact which had come to my knowledge, that he has again and again asserted that this case was a case of poisoning by strychnia, but that Dr. Taylor had not known how to find it out—he admits that that is a statement he has again and again made.
Mr. Serjeant Shee—It was in the newspapers, he said.
Attorney-General
Mr. Attorney-General—He did not venture to say that the newspaper statement in any way differed from the fact which he admitted in this Court. I have seen that gentleman not merely contenting himself with coming forward, when called upon for the purposes of justice, to state that which he knew as a matter of science or of experiment, but I have seen him mixing himself up as a thoroughgoing partisan in this case, advising my learned friend, suggesting question upon question, and that in behalf of a man whom he has again and again asserted he believed to be a poisoner by strychnia. I do not say that alters the fact; but I do say that it induces one to look at the credit of those witnesses with a very great amount of suspicion. I reverence a man who, from a sense of justice and a love of truth—from those high considerations which form the noblest elements in the character of man—comes forward in favour of a man against whom the world may run in a torrent of prejudice and aversion, and who stands and states what he believes to be the truth; but I abhor the traffic in testimony to which I regret to say men of science sometimes permit themselves to condescend. I ask you therefore to look at the statements of those witnesses with dispassionate consideration before you attach implicit credit to them. But let me assume that all they say is true, that it is the fact that they in their experiments have succeeded in discovering strychnia when mixed with other impurities, and contaminated, no matter by what cause—they say that no extent of putrefaction, no amount of decomposition, will alter the character of that vegetable matter, so that it may not be detected if it is in the human stomach. Be it so. But then must it always be found in every case where death has ensued? Professor Taylor says no; and he says it would be a most dangerous and mischievous proposition to assert that that must necessarily be so—that it would enable many a guilty man to escape who, by administering the smallest quantity whereby life can be affected and destroyed, might by that means prevent the possibility of the detection of the poison in the stomach of the individual. All the witnesses seem to agree in this, or, at all events, the great bulk of them agree in this, that the poison acts after it has been absorbed into the system; taken up by the absorbents of the stomach, it is carried into the blood; passing by means of the circulation through the tissues, it is deposited there; at some stage or other of its progress it affects the nervous system; and as soon as the nerves affecting the muscles of motion become influenced by its baneful power, then come on those muscular spasms and convulsions of which we have heard so much. If the minimum dose be given, and that operates by absorption, it is perfectly clear—and must be clear—that the whole must be taken up by absorbents and pass into the blood, and that none therefore will be found in the stomach. Nay, a further proposition is also clear. If it is necessary that it should be first passed by means of the circulation into the solid tissues of the body, before it acts upon the nervous system, it will cease to be found in the blood. Again, a portion of it, if in excess, will be eliminated in the kidneys, and pass off in watery excretion. You do not know, therefore, in what part of the human body to put your hand upon it. But this is undoubtedly the fact, if there has been an excess over the quantity necessary to destroy the life of a particular individual, then, as soon as the absorbents have taken up the necessary quantity, the nervous system will at once be affected and life destroyed; you will find the excess in the stomach, if you adopt the proper means of seeking for it. Now, what did these gentlemen do? They gave never less than a grain—often as much as two grains; and yet we now know that a quarter of a grain is enough to destroy a small animal like a rabbit, and that no man could venture to hope for life who took half a grain or three-quarters of a grain of it. Therefore in the cases of their experiments, and experiments made, allow me to say, for the purpose of this case, after those parties had been retained—I use the word “retained,” for it is the appropriate word; no parties can be more thoroughgoing partisans than scientific men who have once taken up a case—after they have been retained for this case, and desire that their experiments should have a certain result, they take good care to have doses large enough to leave a small portion in the stomach. But be this as it may, I have only now to deal with the experiments of Professor Taylor and Dr. Rees; they may, for aught I know, be a pair of bunglers; it is no part of my business to uphold them if their professional reputation will not do it; but they tell us that they tried its effects upon four animals of the same species with fully adequate doses. Where they administered two grains they reproduced the poison in abundance; where they administered one grain they found a small indication of it; and when they administered half a grain to two rabbits they found no traces of the poison at all. It may well be that that may result, as Mr. Herapath says, from Professor Taylor not knowing the right way of going about it. It may be, if Mr. Herapath had had the stomach under his more scientific manipulation, he would have produced the strychnia. It is enough for my purpose when, as I show, the man who did in this case experiment upon the stomach of Mr. Cook, in two cases out of four when he had given a smaller dose to rabbits failed to reproduce the poison. What is the conclusion I draw from it? Why, that although I cannot have the advantage here which the positive detection of the strychnia would have afforded if it had been found, there is no room for the opposite conclusion—the converse of the proposition for which my learned friend and his witnesses contend—that the fact of the strychnia not having been reproduced or discovered affords negative conclusive proof that the death was not produced by strychnia. I have no positive proof on the one hand, but on the other hand my learned friend is in the same predicament—he cannot say that he has negative proof conclusive of the fact of this death not having taken place by strychnia.
Attorney-General