Detective and mystery stories; English fiction -- 19th century
had meant no harm, and the subject then dropped, the Baron saying he
would take time to consider of it. From that time I attended Madame
R** until my return to London, when she was clearly recovering. I did
not enter into any conversation with her, as she seemed very reserved
and of an unsociable disposition. The Baron seemed an unusually
attentive husband. Talking over the subject of the seizure a day or
two afterwards, he informed me that the death of his wife would also
have been a severe loss in a pecuniary point of view, as if she lived
she would inherit a considerable fortune. I asked him why he did not
insure her life, and he said he should now certainly do so, but had
not before thought of it. He called upon me about two months later, in
passing through town, and informed me that he intended to travel abroad
for some months. I recommended the German baths, and on his objecting
to the crowds of English there, suggested Griesbach or Rippoldsau, in
the Black Forest, where Englishmen are rarely to be encountered. It was
too early for either place at that time, and I recommended the south
of France until the season was sufficiently advanced. I did not see
him again till October, 1855, when he again called upon me with Madame
R**, who seemed perfectly restored, and of whom I had no difficulty in
reporting most favourably to the ---- Life Assurance Association, as
also some weeks later to the ---- Life Office of Dublin, when applied
to for my professional opinion. I think Madame R**'s was an excellent
life, and there could be no better proof of it than her entire recovery
in the course of a very few months, or indeed weeks, from so severe
an illness. The sensitiveness to antimony would not affect this
opinion. Indeed Professor Taylor, in his work on poisons, points out
distinctly the "idiosyncratic" action of antimony and other medicinals
on certain constitutions, as "conferring on an ordinary medicinal dose
a poisonous instead of a curative action." I have a copy of his work
now before me, in which he says that "daily experience teaches us that
some persons are more powerfully affected than others by an ordinary
dose of opium, arsenic, _antimony_, and other substances;" and again,
in considering the probable amount of the "fatal dose," he speaks of
"that ever-varying condition of idiosyncracy, in which, as it is well
known, there is a state of constitution more liable to be affected by
antimonial compounds than other individuals apparently in the same
conditions as to health, age," &c. I did not, therefore, nor do I
now, consider the sensitiveness of Madame R**'s constitution to that
medicine any objection to her life, especially in view of the immense
vitality shown by her recovery. With regard to the sleep-walking,
I have had no hint from the Baron of such a propensity on the part
of Madame R**. Certainly it was never suggested that she could have
poisoned herself in that way. Indeed the servant girl admitted the
act.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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