Are you judging of the one incidental case, and coming here with conclusions founded on that?—I think it is an element, the time.
Then let me add the element, that the lady continues to the last conscious, and asks to have her legs stretched just before she died; does that shake your faith?—Yes.
Do you not know in that case her last words were to turn her over?—Not at the last moment. I do not dispute it if it is said so.
T. Nunneley
Were there not here the premonitory symptoms; the animals are affected about the jaws and the ears, and Mr. Cook has stiffness in his neck, and asks to have it rubbed?—It is a premonitory symptom.
Was it not a symptom of the convulsions, which are not distinguishable from tetanus?—I have said so. I have stated here that I believe in cases of poison from strychnia it is first developed in the legs and feet.
You have told us the animals began to feel twitching in the ears. This gentleman had, before the convulsions came on, stiffness in the muscles of the neck and jaw, and begged to have them rubbed?—That might be if it were anything else.
I ask you now, is not the difficulty of breathing one of the premonitory symptoms? He sat up in bed and complained of feeling suffocated?—Yes.
And felt a stiffness about the neck and asked to have it rubbed, and, as far as we know, this was the case in all the animals, though they could not ask to be rubbed. I ask you what were these but premonitory symptoms?—In no one single instance could the animal bear to be touched, and it evidently was most painful to it to be touched. I know that Mrs. Smyth asked to have her legs and arms straightened.
Let me ask you this, have you not often found that it was prior to the occurrence of the paroxysm, and not after the paroxysm?—No, I have seen a paroxysm brought on by it.