TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: —Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected. —The subscript numbers, used in chemical formulae, have been rendered as H_{2}SO_{4}. REPORTS OF TRIALS FOR MURDER BY POISONING. REPORTS OF TRIALS FOR MURDER BY POISONING; BY PRUSSIC ACID, STRYCHNIA, ANTIMONY, ARSENIC, AND ACONITIA. INCLUDING THE TRIALS OF TAWELL, W. PALMER, DOVE, MADELINE SMITH, DR. PRITCHARD, SMETHURST, AND DR. LAMSON, WITH CHEMICAL INTRODUCTION AND NOTES ON THE POISONS USED. BY G. LATHOM BROWNE, OF THE MIDLAND CIRCUIT, BARRISTER-AT-LAW, AUTHOR OF “NARRATIVES OF STATE TRIALS IN THE 19TH CENTURY,” AND C. G. STEWART, SENIOR ASSISTANT IN THE LABORATORY OF ST. THOMAS’S HOSPITAL; ASSOCIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE, DUBLIN; AND OF THE SOCIETY OF PUBLIC ANALYSTS. LONDON: STEVENS AND SONS, 119, CHANCERY LANE, Law Publishers and Booksellers. 1883. LONDON: BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. PREFACES. THIS volume of selected reports of the most remarkable trials for murder by poisoning, which have been held during the past half century, with essays and notes explanatory of the nature, and operation, and methods of detecting the various poisons supposed to have been employed, will it is hoped prove useful to the medical, as well as the legal profession. With this object the evidence of the medical and chemical witnesses has been given in detail, especially in those cases in which a conflict of scientific testimony arose, between experts of the highest professional character and reputation. Care has also been taken to state the scientific nomenclature of this class of witness correctly, a point on which the shorthand writers, otherwise so reliable, are naturally liable to fail, catching as they do only the sounds of a language unknown to them, in reporting which the error even in a single letter is often most important. My colleague, besides furnishing the latest information obtainable with reference to the various poisons, has offered from recent experiments, made specially for this purpose, explanations of those points in the several trials about which the rival experts disputed, bringing to bear on them the latest discoveries in chemical science.