Now, assuming for a moment that this issue as to the cause of death rested entirely upon the uncontradicted testimony of these three doctors called for the prosecution, Humphreys, Carter, and Barron, the jury would not have been justified in coming to the conclusion that there was _no reasonable doubt_ that arsenic poisoning was the cause of death. The doctors themselves had admitted that they were unable to arrive at that conclusion, apart from the evidence that arsenic was found in the body. _The idea of arsenical poisoning never occurred to them from the symptoms, until the use of arsenic was first suggested._ _The doctors could not say that_ death resulted from arsenic poisoning, _and yet the jury have actually found that it did_, in the face of the opinions of three eminent medical experts, who say it did not. Even if these doctors had never been called at all for the defense, the jury were yet not justified in taking the evidence of Drs. Humphreys, Carter, and Barron, in the terms which they themselves never intended to pledge themselves to, namely, to exclude _a reasonable doubt_ that death was due to arsenic. Let us consider the position of the medical men called for the defense: Drs. Tidy, Macnamara, and Paul _are the highest authorities on medical and chemical jurisprudence in Great Britain_. No sort of hesitation or doubt attached to the opinions of any of them, and their experience of post-mortem examinations was referred to, as including in the practise of Dr. Tidy, the Crown analyst, some forty cases of arsenic poisoning alone. Dr. Macnamara indorsed the opinion of Dr. Tidy. In addition to that, there was on the same side the evidence of Dr. Paul, professor of medical jurisprudence and toxicology at University College, Liverpool, with an experience of three or four thousand post-mortem examinations. It is impossible to conjecture _by what process of reasoning_ the jury could have come to the conclusion, upon the evidence before them, that it _was beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Maybrick_ had met his death by arsenical poisoning. _This volume of evidence before the jury pointed not only to a doubt as to the cause of death, but to a reasonable_ conclusion that it was _not due to arsenical poisoning. It is inconceivable that the jury should have_ found as they did, _except under the mandatory direction of the judge, which left them apparently no alternative but to substitute his opinions and judgment for_ their own, so that on that _issue the finding was not so much the finding of the jury, to which the prisoner was by law entitled, but the finding of_ the judge, _of whom the jury, abrogating their own functions, became the mere mouthpieces_. THE ADMINISTRATION OF ARSENIC