Cook, John Parsons, -1855; Palmer, William, 1824-1856 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Murder) -- England -- London
Do you find a tittle of evidence of any such excitement?--I think
so--the syphilitic spots. There was no doubt about it.
Do you mean to say that you attribute this to some excitement at some
anterior period long before?--I am not called upon to say that. I take
my opinion from what was seen.
Supposing the man had any such excitement a week before, do you mean
that is sufficient?--Yes; we have instances on record of convulsions in
the very act you allude to.
Have you any instance a fortnight afterwards?--It is quite within the
range of possibility.
Would epilepsy, with tetanic complications, set in from that cause? Do
you mean to stand there, as a serious man of science, and tell me
that?--Yes, the results of sensual excitement--chancre in one of them,
and syphilitic sore throat.
Did you ever hear or know of such a thing as chancre or any other form
of syphilis producing epilepsy?--Not epilepsy, but tetanus. You are
forgetting the tetanic complications.
If I understand it rightly, it stands thus: the sensual excitement
produces the epilepsy, and the chancre produces tetanic
complications?--You are quite mistaken. I say the results of a sensual
excitement.
You have just now said that your reason for thinking and referring it to
epilepsy was that, amongst other things, an hour or an hour and a half
intervened between the taking of the poison and the appearance of the
first symptoms. Do you mean that in your reading you have not met with
cases quite as long as that when the death has arisen from strychnia?--I
cannot recollect where death has followed.
Would the fact of morphia having been given for an hour or two
previously in any way touch your opinion with regard to poison?--No; I
have seen opium bring on convulsions very nearly the same.
Will opium bring on convulsions?--Yes, but a different form of
convulsions from epilepsy.
Because opium brings on convulsions, you assume in this case that
morphia accelerated the disease?--Drawing the inference, I should say it
might.
[Sidenote: W. M‘Donnell]
Suppose not a case of epilepsy, but of strychnia; what would be the
action of morphia? How would it attack the disease?--In some cases it
stimulates. It is exceedingly apt to cause congestion of the brain.
In which disease does it cause excitement?--It depends on the
idiosyncrasy, on the habit of body, if I might use a common term.
Having taken it on the Saturday and Sunday night, and having been free
from nervous excitement on the Sunday and Monday, what would you assume
judging from the result?--If it were opium, yet it is only presumed to
be opium, it appears to have soothed him.
And why, when the man was tranquil on the Sunday and Monday, did you,
after that, venture to say that these pills irritated him?--I do not
mean to say they did.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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