But above all, that which had so much the appearance of justifying the public rage, was the state in which the contents of these bags, boxes, and chests were presented to the purchasers. One example may serve for the whole. There was no reason for supposing that more violence was expended upon Mrs Docherty than upon the others, if we are not rather to suppose that the younger and stronger cases required more vigour, as presenting more resistance. Even in the weakest cases, the _præsidia vitæ_ upon which nature has expended so much labour are not to be overcome by external force weakly exerted, and without leaving marks easily detected, even by the unlettered in anatomy; but we have only to mention the case of Daft Jamie, who fought manfully to the end, as an example of the necessity of leaving upon the body even greater signs of violence than those presented to the eyes of Dr Christison. Taking the little old woman as a fair medium between the young and the old, the weak and the strong--you may remember the examination report: contusions and bruises everywhere, extravasation of blood, blotches of the same crying evidence, and finally the Lydian test of the abraded skin of the throat,--while less or more of these marks must have appeared in every one of the sixteen known cases, we cannot even suppose a solitary example of one where they could have been altogether wanting; and this led many to wonder at the time how the men preferred violence, with so many chances of detection, to the soffana death-drops of some subtle poison, the effects of which were far less likely to be discovered by mere anatomists, curious about structure only, and so far removed from the duty of a _post-mortem_ examination. With no pathological views in their minds, they never would have dreamt of smelling for prussic acid, or searching for the ravages of green vitriol or arsenic, any more than they thought of drawing up their noses under the effluvia of whisky--an evidence which was never absent, and could not be mistaken, and must have led to the curious conclusion that all the bodies sold by friends were those of drunkards, and drunkards alone.