The rigid and fixed condition of the limbs is a marked feature after poisoning by strychnine. In the recent Horsford case, in which a farmer named Walter Horsford was convicted of the murder of his cousin Annie Holmes, at St. Neot's, in 1897, 3·69 grains of strychnine were recovered from the internal organs, after the body was exhumed, _nineteen days_ after death. Even then, rigidity was very marked, especially in the lower limbs and fingers. The same rigidity was remarked by Dr. Stevenson in the case of Matilda Clover, who was poisoned by Neill Cream with strychnine a few years ago. In this case, the body had been buried _from October until May_, and the rigidity in the limbs and fingers was still maintained. Dr. Stevenson states that usually when persons are suffering from strychnine poisoning, they are very apprehensive of death. He has known a woman say, "I am going to die" before any intimation of symptoms had occurred. The first apprehension is, that some terrible calamity is about to take place. CHAPTER XVI OPIUM EATING AND SMOKING--MESCAL BUTTONS THE narcotic properties of the poppy have been known from times of great antiquity. The first mention we have of its use is by Theophrastus, who lived about 300 years B.C. It is supposed that the potion known under the name of Nepenthe, prepared by Helen of Troy, and given to the guests of Menelaus, to drive away their care, was none other than a wine of opium. This conjecture receives support from Homer, who states that Nepenthe was obtained from Thebes, the ancient capital of Egypt. According to Prosper Alpinus, the Egyptians were practised opium eaters, and were often faint and languid through the want of it. They prepared and drank it in the form of "Cretic Wine," which they flavoured and made hotter by the addition of pepper and other aromatics. The Turks and Persians employed opium as a medicine, and also for eating, from a very early period. Dioscorides, the ancient Greek pharmacist, describes how the capsules from which the drug is collected should be cut, and Celsus, a Roman physician of the first century, frequently alludes to opium in his works under the quaint name of "poppy tears." The introduction of opium into India seems to have been connected with the spread of Mahomedanism, the earliest record we have of its use in that country being made by Barbosa in 1511, although it is more than probable it was used in India long before that time. Pyres, the first ambassador from Europe to China in 1516, speaks of the opium of Egypt, Cambay, and the kingdom of Coûs, in Bengal, and states it was eaten by "the kings and lords, and even the common people, though not so much because it costs dear." The Mogul Government uniformly sold the opium monopoly, and the East India Company did likewise.