which had been first served up, concluded from this circumstance that it was this dish that contained the poison. The difficulty however, was, that the priest who had eaten the least, and who had been on the whole extremely abstemious, was precisely the person who had suffered the most, and the soonest; that the woman, who had eaten more than the priest, had been less sick than he; and that the other person, who had eaten more than all the rest, was the one who was the least incommoded.” Was there no cheese rasped over this rice? demanded _Morgagni_. They answered in the affirmative; the priest who had little or no appetite, ate scarcely any thing but the cheese. In that case, said _Morgagni_, you understand already that there was arsenic among that cheese, which had probably been prepared for killing rats, and not having been laid away with sufficient care, some one had taken it to serve up with your rice during the time that you were hurrying the landlord to send up your dinner. These conjectures were verified by the confession of the landlord himself, who, having learned that the patients were out of danger, was no longer afraid to acknowledge that such had been the cause of this unfortunate accident. The practitioner, says _Orfila_, will not be able to form a correct judgment in cases of this kind, if he neglect to pay attention, _first_, to the state of the stomach of the different persons poisoned; in fact, those who have taken a great quantity of food or drink, would feel in general less severe symptoms than others; _second_, to the nature of the dishes and of the drinks, as well as to the quantity that each person may have eaten or drank; _third_, to the existence or absence of vomitings and stools. It is evident that it may happen, that some persons have eaten a tolerably large quantity of a poisoned dish without any serious symptoms taking place, for this very reason, that the quantity of the food was considerable, and that it easily produced copious evacuations, by means of which the poison had been expelled. Numerous cases of culinary poisoning might be adduced in this place, in illustration of the important lights which are to be derived from the investigations which form the subject of the present chapter; but we have already considered the subject very fully under the head of poisons; and in the history of the effects of copper and lead, we have particularly explained the evils that may arise from the careless use of such metallic utensils in cookery.