Mr. Julian Edward Disbrowe Rogers, examined by Mr. Gray—I have been sixteen years Professor of Chemistry at St. George’s School of Medicine, in London. I made an experiment with one dog with a view of extracting strychnia from the body. I gave it two grains of pure strychnia between two pieces of meat. Three days after it was dead I removed the stomach and its contents, and took some of the blood. I analysed the blood ten days after its removal from the body, when it was putrid, and found strychnia by the colour tests. About a month or five weeks afterwards I analysed the stomach and its contents, and strychnia was separated in a large quantity. Having heard the evidence as to the stomach and its contents in this case being put in a jar and sent to London, in my judgment strychnia, if it had been administered, must have been found in the contents of the stomach.
Cross-examined by the Attorney-General—I have only made one experiment with strychnia on this dog.
Do you think it would make any difference if the contents were lost?—If there were no contents spread over the intestines, then that would make a difference. If they had been spilt and shaken, then it would make no difference.
But, supposing they were not there?—There would be the washings of the stomach. If the stomach was sent me with no contents, I would wash the stomach and proceed with that.
If you had tried on the tissues of the deceased’s body I suppose you would have been able to ascertain whether there had been any strychnia?—That is my opinion.
So that the time that has elapsed since Cook died would not matter. If you had an opportunity to operate on it, you would have found the strychnia?—If it had been there, I feel satisfied I should find it.
Lord Campbell—Do you mean then or now?—I do not see that the time would prevent it.
H. Letheby
Dr. Henry Letheby, examined by Mr. Kenealy—I am a Bachelor of Chemistry and Professor of Medicine in the London Hospital; also a medical officer of health to the city of London. I have for a considerable time studied poisons. I believe in every case of this kind tried in this Court during the last fourteen years I have been engaged on behalf of the Crown. I have been present during the examination of the medical witnesses at this trial and heard them describe certain symptoms attending the death of Mr. Cook. I have seen many deaths by strychnia in the lower animals. I have seen several cases of nux vomica in the human subject, one of which was fatal. The symptoms in the animals do not accord with the symptoms in this case. In the first place, I have never known such a long interval between the administration of the poison and the coming on of the symptoms. The longest interval has been three-quarters of an hour, and then the poison was given in a form not easy of solution, and when the stomach was full. I have seen the symptoms begin in five minutes after the poison was administered. A quarter of an hour would be the average. Another reason is that in all the animals I have seen, and the human subject also, when under strychnia, the system has been so irritable that the very slightest excitement, as an effort to move, a slight touch, a noise, or a breath of air, will set them off in convulsions. I do not think it at all probable that a person to whom a dose of strychnia had been given could rise out of bed and ring a bell violently. Any movement at all would excite the nervous system, and there would be spasms. It is not likely a person in that state of nervous irritation could bear to have his neck rubbed. Where poisoning by strychnia does not end fatally, the paroxysm is succeeded by other paroxysms, which gradually shade themselves off. They generally become less and less, over a period of some hours. My experience agrees with Dr. Christison, that it would last over a period of sixteen or eighteen hours before the man gets better. I do not hesitate to say that strychnia is of all poisons the most easy of detection. I have detected it in the stomach, in the blood, and in the tissues of animals in numerous instances. The longest period after death that I have examined a body has been one month. The animal was then in a state of decomposition, and I succeeded in detecting very minute portions of the strychnia. When the strychnia is pure it can be detected in a very small portion of a part, at least the twentieth part of a grain. When mixed up with other matter it is a little more difficult. I can detect the tenth part of a grain in a pint of any liquid that you put before me, whether the liquid was pure or putrefied.
You have succeeded in detecting it in animals which have been killed a month, and were in a state of decomposition. What is the dose you have given them?—I gave the animal, a rabbit, originally half a grain, which killed it, and I have the strychnia here within a fraction of what I gave. I lost about a tenth part of a grain in the course of the investigation.