Stientific Intelligence. ^^Cheviidry. 185 



the most valuable, because they are the result of express experi- 

 ments ; and, in one set of them, comparative experiments were 

 made on animals not poisoned with arsenic. In dogs poisoned 

 with arsenic, and buried for two months, the flesh and alimentary 

 canal were found red and fresh, as if pickled ; and, though the 

 cellar in which they were buried again was flooded for eight 

 months after, the intestines were eventually found entire and 

 red, while all the soft parts of dogs killed by blows, by corrosive 

 sublimate, or by opium, and buried in the same place^ were con- 

 verted into a greasy mass *. Another experimentalist, Dr Kelch 

 of Konigsberg, buried, in February, the internal organs of a 

 man, who had died of arsenic, and whose body had remained, 

 without burial, till the external parts had begun to decay ; and, 

 on examining the stomach and intestines, ^t?^ months afterwards, 

 . he found that the hamper which contained them was very rotten ; 

 but, " that they had a peculiar smell, very different from that of 

 putrid bowels,'" — " were not yet acted on by putrefaction,"— 

 *' and were still as fresh as \^'hen they were taken from the body, 

 and might have served to m,ake instructive preparations."" Nay, 

 " they had lost nothing of their colour, glimmer, or firmness,"-— 

 " In the stomach, the inflamed spots, seen originally, had not dis- 

 appeared ; and the small intestines showed, in some places, spots 

 of inflammation, with the redness unaltered -j-." In consequence 

 of the preservation of the body, arsenic has been detected in 

 Qevrnway fourteen months after interment. It is proper to add, 

 that arsenic does not always act as an antiseptic upon the bodies 

 of those poisoned with it. The circumstances under which it 

 does act have not been determined. 



4. Observations on Iron hy M. Ant. Muller. — (1.) Cast Iron. 

 \st, Iron is capable of forming two distinct combinations with car- 

 bon ; one, in which there is little carbon and much iron, the car- 

 buret of iron (protocarburet) ; another, in which there is much 

 carbon and little iron, graphite (percarburet). 9.d, Cast-iron is 



* Neue Entdeckungeii betreffend die Kennzeichen der Arsenic-ver- 

 giftung. Augustin's Kepertorium fur die bffentliche und gerichtliche Medizin 

 I. i. 26. 



+ Hufeland's Journal der praktischen Heilkunde, XIX. iv. iii, and XXII. 

 i. 166. 



