1. _Slow Poisons._ According to the popular acceptation of the term, they may be defined, _Substances which can be administered imperceptibly; and a single dose of which will operate so gradually, as to shorten life like a lingering disease; their force, at the same time, admitting of so nice an adjustment as to enable the artist to occasion death at any required period._ We have now to inquire how far such alleged powers are consistent with the known laws of physiology. It cannot be denied that certain substances have been introduced into the alimentary canal, where they have remained for an indefinite period, without occasioning the slightest inconvenience, and at length excited a disease that has terminated fatally; in the _London Medical and Physical Journal_ for February 1816, a case is related in which death was occasioned by a chocolate-nut having lodged in the entrance of the _Appendix Vermiformis_; and in the _Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal_ for July 1816, we have an analogous case, communicated by Dr. _Briggs_ of Liverpool, where the _Appendix cæci_ sphacelated, owing to the irritation of a human tooth which was found sticking in its cavity. Mr. _Children_ has lately communicated to the Royal Society a case where a concretion in the colon produced death; upon examination it was found to contain a plum-stone, as a nucleus, and to consist of a fine fibrous vegetable substance, from the inner coat enveloping the farina of the oat, and which was derived from the oatmeal upon which the deceased had fed. (_Phil. Trans._ 1822.) However disposed we may feel, by a forced construction of the term, to consider such agents as _slow_ poisons, it is very evident that they can rarely have been made subservient to the purposes of secret poisoning; although a case occurred in the practice of the author,[136] in which a girl swallowed six copper pence for the avowed purpose of destroying herself; the coin produced a disease which remained chronic for a very considerable period, when, after a lapse of five years, they were voided, and the young woman recovered. A similar attempt was also made by _Theodore Gardelle_, after his conviction for the murder of Mrs. _King_ (_vide ante_), he swallowed a number of halfpence, for the purpose of destroying himself, but without any ill effect. Dr. _Baillie_, in his ‘_Morbid Anatomy_,’ relates an instance where five halfpence had been lodged in a pouch in the stomach for a considerable time, without occasioning any irritation; and Mr. _A. Thomson_ has also furnished us with two analogous cases in children, in one of which the copper coin remained six months in the intestines, and in the other, two months. These facts furnish sufficient data to enable the practitioner to appreciate the degree of danger attendant upon such agents, and to determine how far they can ever become successful instruments in the hands of the assassin.[137]