Mr. T. Bond, assistant-surgeon to the Westminster Hospital and lecturer
on forensic medicine, offers through the Times a remark on the Bravo case which is of some value. After pointing out, as we have done, that the theory of suicide is not supported by independent evidence, he observes that if Mr. Bravo had himself taken a large dose of antimony and then in a fright used emetics, he would probably have recovered ; whereas if he took it in his food or drink, the action would be deferred, and the poison have time to kill him. All vegetable extracts, of which, of course, wine is one, retard the action of antimony, a drug which, though rapid in its action on carnivorous animals, operates more slowly on herbivorous ones. That suggestion that if the emetic had been taken immediately after the poison, as it must have been on the suicide theory, the man would have lived, is the most valuable yet submitted to the newspaper jury of re- vision,—which ought not to sit, but does.
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