Before we conclude our observations upon the organic lesions occasioned by arsenic, we may caution the anatomist not to confound the red or violet colour which characterises inflammation, with that which has been occasionally found to arise from the ingestion of certain coloured drinks. The following case related by _Foderé_, and cited by _Orfila_, may serve to illustrate this subject. “A private person of Châlons sur-Marne, who was in a state of convalescence from a disease under which he had laboured, took a slight purgative, and died very shortly afterwards. He was believed to have been poisoned through some error in the medicine, and in order to be assured of this, the body was opened. The œsophagus and stomach were found to be red, and in certain places livid, as if in a state of gangrene. These appearances at first induced a belief that the deceased had died from poison; but _M. Varnier_, a physician of Châlons, concluded from the appearances, that death was the consequence of the disease, and that the apparent convalescence was only an insidious respite. It became therefore necessary to give some account of the state of the œsophagus and stomach; and having learnt that the deceased was in the habit of using a _strong infusion of red poppies_, the idea immediately struck him that the extraordinary colour of these organs might possibly depend on this infusion. In order to determine the validity of this explanation, he caused a dog to swallow, several times, a similar infusion; when upon opening its body, he discovered that the corresponding parts of this animal had assumed the same colour as had been observed in the stomach of the deceased above-mentioned, and, moreover, that this violet red colour was so firmly fixed that it resisted the action of repeated washings.” _Tincture of Cardamoms_ will also be liable to occasion a coloured appearance in the stomach, as described in _Mr. Stanley’s_ case of the death of a woman by a dose of opium.[239] _Of the Chemical Processes, by which the presence of Arsenious Acid may be detected._ This poison may either be submitted to the judicial physician for examination, in its solid form, or in that of solution; and in this latter state it may be mixed with various alimentary substances, whose presence will necessarily embarrass the inexperienced operator, and multiply the apparent difficulties of his task. It becomes our duty, therefore, upon this occasion, to enter very fully and minutely into the history of the various processes, which have been proposed for the solution of the important problem under consideration; to appreciate the relative value of each, and to point out the sources of fallacy and failure, to which they are severally exposed.