_Foderé_ informs us that during the period he was pursuing his studies at Turin in 1784, the chambermaid and man servant of a noble family of that town, for the purpose of regaling themselves, stole from their master a bottle of distilled laurel water; fearful of being surprised, they hastily swallowed several mouthsful of it; but they soon paid the price of their dishonesty, having almost instantly expired in convulsions. Works on Toxicology also abound with the relation of experiments, made by numerous physiologists on different animals, with this deleterious liquid. Amongst the experimentalists we may enumerate the names of _Madden_, _Mortimer_, _Browne_, _Langrish_, _Nicholls_, _Stenzelius_, _Heberden_, _Watson_, _Vater_, _Rattrai_, the _Abbé Rozier_, _Duhamel_, _Fontana_, and _Orfila_. In this country we have had several fatal cases of poisoning by laurel water. In the year 1782, _Dr. Price_, of Guildford, having professed to have converted mercury into gold, offered to repeat his experiments before a competent tribunal, but the unfortunate philosopher put a period to his existence before the day appointed for his exhibition, by a draught of laurel water; a mode of death which had been, no doubt, suggested by the celebrated trial of _Donellan_, for the murder of _Sir Theodosius Boughton_, that had taken place in the preceding year, and left a strong impression upon the public mind; and whose details, it has been justly observed, are not more important from the elucidation of the effects of this poison, than from the strange display of professional testimony to which it gave origin, (see _Appendix_, page 243.) There are those who still profess to believe that the prisoner was unjustly convicted upon that occasion; _Dr. Male_ states, without the least reserve, that it was neither proved that the deceased was poisoned, nor that any poison had existed.[439] We feel no difficulty in declaring that we hold a directly opposite opinion; and we consider that many of the weaker points of professional evidence delivered on the trial, have received powerful support and elucidation from the experiments and observations of later physicians.