Nevertheless, it is a remarkable fact that some persons never acquire this caution, even with such a bitter experience as that described. We remember being called up one midnight to a case of poisoning, where an ounce of saltpetre had been given for an ounce of Epsom salts. The mother recollected placing the salts in the cupboard, but she forgot one other very important fact, that she had also placed the packet of saltpetre in the same place some time previously, and so she took the first packet that came to her hand and made it up without the slightest inspection. Notwithstanding this experience, a week or two later she made a similar mistake with another poison from the same cupboard. A phial of croton oil, used to produce an eruption on the chest, was lifted instead of a phial of olive oil, and poured into the ear to relieve earache.
Referring for a moment to suicides, of which there were two hundred and eighty-eight for the same period, we find some curious and even extraordinary statistics. For example, there is a very great difference, as a rule, in the agents employed by men and by women to effect suicide. A class of poisons under the generic name of vermin-killers, but which in the majority of instances are merely arsenic or strychnine disguised, have been the agents used by seventeen females and only seven males. The opium preparations, on the other hand, very nearly reverse these proportions, having been used by twenty males and only twelve females. Carbolic acid, again, has been used by thirteen females and only six males; and so on. Apparently, the agent used in the majority of cases is determined either by a facility in the obtaining of the poison, or by a certain familiarity in the every-day use of it, otherwise we cannot account for the general use of some slow, uncertain, and frightfully painful poisons such as carbolic acid and phosphorus. Of more importance, however, than this are the following facts, which we think require some explanation or investigation. We find one hundred and one deaths recorded—fifty-eight by accident and forty-three by suicide—from seven substances alone, not one of which the legislature at present requires to be labelled poison! Surely this requires some looking after. We find seventy-eight deaths (not suicides) from lead-poisoning. We would like to know how far these seventy-eight deaths are to be accounted for from absorption of the poison by those working amongst it, and how far they might have been avoided by ordinary precautions? Lastly, we find one hundred and two deaths—twenty-six by accident and seventy-six by suicide—from poisons which should not be sold unless under the strictest regulations. We would like to know how far these regulations have been observed in these cases, as we have reason to conclude that there is a laxity existing somewhere.
ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.
A NOVELETTE.
BY T. W. SPEIGHT.
CHAPTER XI.
The first thing that struck Colonel Woodruffe on entering the room of Madame De Vigne was the extreme pallor of her face. She looked like a woman newly restored to the world after a long and dangerous illness. Although the window was wide open, the venetians were lowered, while Mora herself was dressed in black, and in the semi-obscurity of the room, her white, set face, with its sorrow-laden eyes, had an effect that was almost ghostlike to one coming suddenly out of the glaring sunlight. At least so it seemed to Colonel Woodruffe. He felt that at such a time all commonplace questions would seem trivial and out of place, so he went forward without a word, and lifting her hand, pressed it gently to his lips.
‘Read this, please,’ she said as she handed him her husband’s letter. Then they both sat down.
He read the note through slowly and carefully. As he handed it back to her, he said: ‘What do you mean to do?’
‘I shall see him at the hour he specifies, and shall tell him that I have already commissioned you to seek out Sir William Ridsdale and tell him everything.’