256 ANNUAL OP SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



characteristic of these cases. A mere lamp or hot cinder suffices ; 

 while in the experiments made upon the Countess's body 125 pounds 

 of wood had to be used. The other capital point is, the isolation of 

 the combustion amidst combustible bodies, the most inflammable substan- 

 ces remaining uninjured. In the Countess's case the floor and chairs, 

 even at a distance, were burned. In M. Devergie's case, complete 

 combustion of the body had taken place in a little wooden room five 

 or six feet broad by eight or nine feet long, and yet two muslin 

 curtains at the window were uninjured. In all the cases, too, abuse of 

 alcohol is mention ; and although Bischoff laughs at this as a mere 

 invention of the persons of the vicinity, for the purpose of pointing a 

 moral, it is too particularly specified in all the cases to admit of doubt, 

 and it is to this abuse of alcohol that M. Devergie is disposed to at- 

 tribute the production of the phenomenon. The quantity excreted 

 by the urine and, sweat is probably not in due relation to that imbibed ; 

 and a vital modification is impressed upon the tissues, by reason of 

 which they become endowed with a greater combustibility, either 

 mechanically, or by the transformation of the absorbed alcohol com- 

 bined with the tissues into a new substance. Annales d' Hygiene. 



CHEMICAL TESTIMONY IX CASES OF POISONING. 



M. ORFILA, in a recent capital case for poisoning in France, took 

 occasion to represent to the court the reason why experts could not 

 reply to the question so often put to them, as to whether a sufficient 

 quantity of poison to cause death had been administered, and the 

 danger, in reference to the suppression of crime, the insisting upon 

 such a question gave rise to. The chemist may only be able to detect 

 the thousandth, or the twenty-thousandth part that has been adminis- 

 tered, when the poison has been evacuated or excreted, and the dis- 

 charges have not been preserved. If all the poison has been thus 

 expelled he may not be able to detect even a trace, and yet, although 

 in the one case, what he has detected has been insufficient to cause 

 death, and in the other he has found none at all, so that the jury may pro- 

 nounce that no poisoning has occurred, yet has the person died of such 

 poisoning. To ascertain the whole amount of poison that remains in the 

 body, the entire frame would have to be submitted to analysis, which 

 is clearly impracticable ; while calculations of the quantity existing 

 in the whole body from that which has been obtained from a part, 

 would give rise to the greatest errors, inasmuch as the poison is not 

 equally distributed over the whole frame, some portions of this absorb- 

 ing and retaining much more of it than others. Different processes 

 also employed by the same hand afford very different quantities, as 

 does the same process performed by chemists of different degrees of 

 expertness. The French law, too, does not require any decision on 

 this point, as it punishes the attempt to poison by any substance that 

 may cause death this applying not to the proportion employed, but 

 to the substance used. 



