be able to appreciate what our safeguards are against the criminal use of elaborate developments in the art of chemistry.

This poisoner, then, was not an ignorant man. He was a duly qualified physician, by convention an expert in drugs, and by law in a position to obtain possession of deadly poisons with ease-a privilege, by the way, that has recently been seen to be largely shared with the medical profession by the public at large. He chose a poison the dose of which was excessively small, the chemical tests for which were unknown, and the symptoms of which were obscure. Indeed, aconitine had never, or at least only once previously, figured in the law-courts as a cause of death, so that its effects were necessarily a secret to most men-medical or lay. As might have been expected, therefore, the ordinary post-mortem examination revealed no cause of death. So far all went well with Lamson, and so far his expert knowledge stood him in good stead as a secret poisoner. But suspicion chanced to fall upon him of the nature of that chance more will be said-and an investigation was started with the view of proving that the boy had been murdered by an irritant poison. The clue was obtained by a few words of dying complaint in which the unfortunate lad alluded to some peculiar sensations in his mouth and throat. This suspicion was confirmed beyond a shadow of doubt by scientific evidence from two sets of experiments, undertaken by the experts upon themselves, and upon living mice by injecting them with the alkaloidal extract of the victim's stomach. This alkaloidal extract produced to the taste of the examiners certain symptoms that are always associated with the use of aconite, and the signs of aconite-poisoning more or less corresponded with those that the moribund lad had described. Again, the alkaloidal extract killed mice in certain times and with certain signs, and these signs and times were demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to be identical with the signs and times when the same little animals were killed with solutions containing aconitine of a known strength. This was held to be a proof that the boy had died of aconitine poisoning. The late Mr. Montagu Williams in an able defence did his best-which in that line. was far in excess of anybody else's best-to argue and laugh the method of proof out of court; but the scientific men were rightly too strong for him, and the position that they took up was practically unassailable. It was freely admitted that there was no known chemical test for the vegetable extractive aconitine, but it was claimed, and the jury allowed the claim, that the analyst had demonstrated the certainty that the

victim had perished by aconitine poisoning, because the contents of his stomach were capable of producing aconitine poisoning. Then it was proved that the prisoner had bought aconitine in more than one place, and had tried to buy it in others. The extreme rarity of its use in legitimate medicine, combined with its deadly nature, made every attempt to purchase it memorable, and Lamson was a marked man in half-a-dozen shops. Personal advantage being shown also to accrue to him by the death of the lad, the halter was round his neck. Here was a man of scientific attainments and medical knowledge, who chose his poison and chose his time, and failed. He was hanged, and the reason was his ignorance. Ignorance still, though only comparative ignorance. He knew more than those around his victim, but not so much as the really learned. That is to say that, when once suspicion chanced to fall upon him, his science became of no avail, for more scientific people than himself were arrayed against him. What was the measure of chance that suspicion should fall upon him? This is the question we have to answer, for this it is that really constitutes the measure of danger that such a person is likely to be to the community-if it can be conceded, as upon consideration of the case we think it should be conceded, that once suspected he is certain to be detected. This measure of chance is enormously high with the scientific poisoner, as the following will show:

First, he is using an agent of which he can know very little-for the individual experiences of one man concerning a drug amount to nothing. If the alkaloid is rare enough to have a good chance of baffling detection, it must be one of which the murderer, in common with everybody else, is comparatively ignorant. Hence the chance is great that he will give an overdose, and by producing sudden symptoms arouse suspicion of foul play. In fact, scientific man though he be, his proceedings may be as crude as those of the wife-basher; and it is a consoling fact that whenever the medical profession have been detected in poisoning, they have failed in this manner.

Second, there will be difficulty in obtaining the drug, and its purchase will attract pointed attention. He will be a marked man by his attempt to obtain the drug, even if his position as bénéficiaire under the crime does not bring suspicion on him, or his profession of medical man or chemist.

Third, the plea of accidental death cannot be set up with any show of plausibility where a rare alkaloid has been used, as it can where the

agent has been some common commercial product employed in the household offices for scouring or vermin-killing, or one that is known to be the chief ingredient in popular hair-dyes or complexion-washes. The person who dies of aconitine and similar rare, expensive, deadly extractives does not die by accident.

It may be thought that it is a bold generalisation from the consideration of one particular case to say that chemical developments in poisoning are not to be feared as likely to produce an increase in the number of secret poisoners, but it is, I venture to think, just. The general facts are these, and the individual case forms a good exemplification of them :-In favour of secret poisoning by vegetable alkaloids we have The smallness of the fatal dose: the obscurity of the symptoms produced: and the impossibility of obtaining chemical proof of the presence of the alkaloid in the body. Against these we haveThe difficulty of obtaining the drug : possibly the great difficulty of administration: the notoriety that will attend the purchase: and the impossibility of all questions of accident, and most questions of suicide. Of these latter-the public's safeguards-the third is the one that has hanged, and generally will hang, the scientific poisoner. Also, it is not the only case of the sort that has occurred. In 1864 a French doctor named De la Pommerais* attempted to elude the vigilance of the law by using as his agent the alkaloid digitalin, believing-quite correctly— that chemical analysis would not reveal the origin of death. The story is remarkably similar to Lamson's. As in Lamson's case, suspicion fell upon the guilty man, because, first, his profession allowed him access to poisons, and, second, he was known to have money reasons for desiring the removal of the victim. The presence of the poison could not be demonstrated in the body-i.e., no chemical test revealed the presence of digitalin. But it was inferred that death was due to digitalin from the fact that the contents of the dead woman's stomach produced death, with the academic symptoms of foxglove-poisoning, when injected into animals. When De la Pommerais was found to have been in possession of digitalin in quantities out of all proportion to any ordinary medical need for so deadly a nostrum, the game was up with him. He had the motive, the means, and the opportunity, and the French jury found him guilty, anticipating by their verdict the triumph of common-sense over pedantry that later distinguished the issue of the Lamson case.

Taylor's Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence. Vol. I.

(2) We come now to the question of how far recent biological research may furnish weapons to the poisoner of the future.

In certain infectious diseases—for instance, in cholera and tuberculosis-the existence of minute living organisms has been demonstrated beyond all doubt, and that these organisms stand in causal relation to the diseases is in the opinion of some almost as well established. More-the discovery of a specific contagium vivum n connection with some of the fevers has led calm and reasonable minds to the conclusion that an analogous cause is present in all the other fevers. Here, then, seems a mighty opportunity for the poisoner! He has only to infect his victim with the specific germ, to inoculate him with a deadly disease. What risk does he run? At first sight it would seem that we really have here a method of poisoning, made possible by the processes of science, which must bid defiance to detection. The story of such a case would be in direct opposition to the story of the typical case of poisoning by well-known drugs.

The subject would not be taken suddenly extremely ill, unless he chanced to be infected with one of those fevers in which the invasion is very abrupt.

He would die with signs and symptoms according with those produced by a well-known natural disease.

The autopsy would either prove negative in result, or reveal the presence of that well-known natural disease.

Why should suspicion be aroused? Why should the necessary death-certificate not be granted? In each case the answer is-there is no reason whatever. The public safeguards are different. They are here, and they are just as efficient, but they are quite different. It is the act of poisoning in this manner that is so hard, and that will always remain so hard that secret poisoning by means of germ-inoculation need never be seriously feared. If the act could be performed, detection would be well-nigh impossible, but to all but an extremely limited class of persons the act itself is quite impossible. In other words-in the present state of our scientific knowledge the public is safe.

Yet the apprehension of the public that the germs, concerning the discovery of which the unprofessional journals have so much to say, might be used for criminal purposes is natural, and in one European country, at least, wide-spread; and if this feeling is not shared by us in England, it is no fault of our journals. The accounts of the feats of the masters of bacteriology-the terrible little things that they have discovered, and

the terrible big things that these little things can do-have all been duly chronicled for us, with much inconsequent detail and some incorrect comment. But-and this is the point-the bacteriologists themselves have hardly received their meed from these journals, though the meaning of their work has been so eulogistically misinterpreted, and its results so foolishly magnified. The amount of chemical knowledge, manual dexterity, patience, faith, and imagination required of them before those discoveries could be made was not duly dwelt upon. The splendour of the discoveries, the vast benefit that might accrue to the sick, the magnificent vista of universal healing opened up by the contemplation of the notion of a universal inoculation, obscured the tentative nature of much of the work, and entirely hid the great difficulties under which those who did it had laboured. Not a word was said about the extreme difficulty of isolating these germs, of the almost life-long training in scientific methods that is required before observation even becomes trustworthy, and of the great chance that though the observations be reliable, any slight error in practical experimentation would vitiate the result. All that appeared was that certain savants had discovered that the cause of a disease was a little body, that the little body could be separated from the diseased person, could be taught to live outside him, and if placed inside a new host, would give rise to the original disease again. It must have seemed to the layman that it was open to any scientist to isolate the germ, and to anybody to inject it into his enemyif he could get hold of it. More-many people actually believed that the maliciously inclined would be able to send round to the venal doctor-if not to the grocer-for a packet of cholera germs, or to buy hydrophobia" cultivations" by the pound. The preparations that were on sale, after Koch's discovery, for injection in tubercular cases were of course "attenuated," and presumably would no more infect the patient with true and mortal phthisis than vaccine lymph would cause true smallpox in those inoculated with it. Yet the importation of these preparations was quite solemnly condemned by one widely-read morning paper. Even the introduction of the germ-specimens into this country for microscopic purposes was gravely inveighed against as a proceeding that tended to imperil the health of the community. All this was nonsense, and now that the feelings of the public, in the absence of flaring announcements of Continental discoveries, have become less warm, it appears as such. Of general secret poisoning by the use of the germs of natural disease we shall never hear, for the skill in cultivating and preserving