Or take the case of Richard Overfield, who was condemned at Shrewsbury Assizes in 1824 for murdering his own child, a babe three months old, by pouring sulphuric acid down its throat. In the dead body the following appearances were found: The lips were blistered internally and of a dark colour externally; the gullet was contracted and its inner coat corroded; the lining membrane of the mouth and tongue of a dull white colour; the great curvature of the stomach corroded and converted into a substance like wet brown paper; the stomach perforated and a bloody-coloured fluid in the sac of the peritonæum.[297] If to these appearances be added the fact that the child’s dress was reddened, what is there to prevent the medical jurist from declaring, without reference to chemical evidence, that this case must have been one of poisoning by sulphuric acid or some other mineral acids? In like manner in the case of Mrs. Humphrey, who was condemned at Aberdeen in 1830 for murdering her husband by pouring sulphuric acid down his throat while he was asleep, there was found, on examining the dead body, two brown spots on the outside of the lips,—whiteness of the inside of the lips and of the gums,—glazing of the palate,—redness, with here and there ash-coloured discoloration, of the uvula, posterior part of the throat, pharynx and epiglottis,—abrasion of most of the inner coat of the gullet,—erosion and dark-red ulceration of the inner coat of the stomach in winding furrows. When to these appearances it is added, that the man was in good health only forty-seven hours before death, and was taken ill instantaneously and violently with burning pain in the throat and stomach,[298] it is not easy to see what other opinion could be formed of the case, unless that he died of poisoning with a mineral acid, and probably with sulphuric acid. Among the appearances justifying an opinion where chemical evidence happens to be wanting, not the least important seems to me to be the peculiar turgescence and induration of vessels under the peritonæum of the stomach and neighbouring organs, occasioned by the chemical coagulation of blood in them. It is an appearance, which, when once seen, cannot be confounded with any natural morbid phenomenon I have ever witnessed.