THE POISON CASES.
A. FAILURE of justice does not consist only in the escape of "the guilty" ; its worst part is the failure of a defence for the in- nocent. Where the discovery of poisoning is not carried home in such eases as those of Wooler at Darlington or Cook at Rugeley, two classes of the innocent are declared to be without protection, —those who are to be poisoned, and those who from their being near the victim at the time of death stand implicated by the event. Some of these last oases suggest a horrible fear that poi- soning may be much more extensive in society than we have sup- posed,—that English society in the latter half of the ,nineteenth century may rival in its poisonous tricks the society of dissi- pated Paris or degenerate Rome. Who on feeling unaccountably ill, knows but that it maybe his wife, his sister, his servant, or his medical attendant, that is dooming him to destruction? It is inevitable that suspicions of this sort must cross the mind of num- bers, especially where valetudinarian qualms are accompanied by unhappy discords, perhaps cross interests, of the household. But how much more horrible is it to reflect that suspicion of this kind in the event of death must in many instances light upon the in- accent! Mrs. Wooler, for example, has manifestly died of poison: she was surrounded by her husband, her sister, female friends, the servant, and her medical men: she may be said to have died in their hands, of poison which some of them suspected, and sus- pected for many days ; and yet, without an attempt to, trace the mode in which the poison was administered, she was so suffered to linger and die. With regard to the medical men in this ease, speaking of them collectively,—for there were distinctions in their behaviour,— they appear to have committed the mistake of confounding the proper object of their vigilance. They refrained from pressing home the suspicion suggested by .the symptoms, because they feared, if they had divulged their impressions sooner, to point out a particular person as guilty. It is a very curious mistake in logic. They were delicate towards that particular per- son, because they did him the injustice of going a great way towards presuming his guilt. They refrained from detect- ing him, as it were, because they believed him guilty ; and they flinched from the responsibility of fastening that guilt,upon him. It usually happens that men make mistakes when they travel beyond their province. The medical men had nothing to do with Mr. Wooler : the whole object of their regard ought te Imre been the disease and rescue of Mrs. Wooler. If They had stuck to that question, their course would have been quite clear. Hero was a woman dying of poison, the general character of which they, cor- rectly understand. The poison, of course, must have been ad- ministered to her ; and the whole question for them should have been first, how could the poison get at her; and secondly, how could they protect her against further administration of the drug? It is evident that one course must have been quite successful: if the medical men had constituted themselves a committee en per- manence, had administered the medicaments themselves and Them- selves alone, any further tampering with the dying woman would have been absolutely impossible. It is indeed still a question, of which we are not prepared to presume the conclusion, whether or not a poison might not have been administered by the deceased herself. It is well known that some persons have a peculiar faculty for resisting the action of poisonous drugs : some men take enormous doses of opium with impunity ; we have heard of one who daily swallowed enough prussic acid to kill a horse ; and if we are not mistaken instances have occurred of arsenic being swallowed with a similar hardi- hood. Arsenic is sometimes taken for cosmetic purposes. Like mercury, it is calculated to accumulate in the system ; and it is quite conceivable that, with the special irritation which it causes, it might so far travel beyond the ordinary course as to have tainted those very instruments that appeared to be the means of adminis- tering it. We are not prepared to dispute medical opinions which say that this is impossible ; we only know that medical men are very hasty in pronouncing things impossible,. and that some few years ago the mere presence of arsenic, even in microscopic quan- tities, would be roundly denied in cases where it is now notorious. But the condition of Mrs. Wooler was one which at all events de- manded a modest but an eager and peremptory. investigation ; not for the purpose of deciding questions of guilt or innocence, but for the purpose of finding out how the arsenic got where it was, and how its further administration could be prevented. Guilt or in- nocence might have been discovered by inquiry, but the first duty of the medical man was to do that work for its own sake.
The latest case suggests a further question. At the inquest, yesterday, on the body of Mrs. Palmer, the exhumed wife of the Rugeley surgeon all went as smoothly as possible. Witness after witness—Mrs. Palmer's sister-in-law, her brother-in-law, her ser- vant, her nurse, her medical attendants, all described a very na- tural scene of gradual death by a known disease—" English cholera." Medicines were duly sent in by Mr. Bamford • who was quite sure that he had never sent tartar emetic in mistake for tartrate of potass. It curiously happened that the patient never had her constant symptom, vomiting, when one friend, a Mrs. Wells, was with her ; but what then r The character of the case is legible even to the hired nurse ; who gave her testimony— describing Mrs. Palmer's retiring disposition and,wish for seclusion, Palmer's assiduity and grief—with a propriety that drew applause from the sympathizing auditory of the Coroner's Court. On a chemical analysis, Professor Taylor and Dr. Owen Rees found not a trace of disease ; but the body was saturated with antimony, probably administered. in frequent doses of tartar emetic. The new questions, then, are these-
1. Does adulteration of drugs amount, often, to actual poisoning? this very case the antimony seems to have been adulterated with arse= rj 2. Are medical men sufficiently alive to the possibility of poisoning in obscure or ecluivocal cases ; or do they often let it pass in the disguise of a supposed disease?
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