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IV. SCIENCE AND CRIME. 
THE “MOUNTAIN ASH’’ MURDER. 
Ir has frequently happened in the history of crime that some 
ereat culprit has been arraigned for poisoning, and medical or 
chemical evidence has been called by the prosecution as well as the 
defence. On such occasions it has sometimes occurred that men of 
the highest scientific attainments, taking opposite sides in the trial, 
have given evidence on apparently simple scientific questions of a 
totally contradictory character. Under such circumstances the 
counsel for the defence has not unnaturally taken the utmost 
advantage of the difference of opinion, and in a few isolated cases, 
perhaps, great criminals may have escaped the punishment which 
their crimes deserved. “The world,” always more ready to criticize 
and condemn new movements, than to inquire carefully into their 
merits, has, in consequence of these occasional anomalies in scientific 
evidence, been disposed to look with contempt upon the efforts of 
science in the detection of crime; and “differing doctors” have 
become a by-word in matters of criminal law. But instead of acting 
as an obstruction to the course of justice, scientific investigation has 
become the terror of evil-doers, and if it has not succeeded in 
putting an end to certain classes of homicide, it is simply because 
criminals are either so foolish as to suppose that their case has been 
so cleverly managed as to defy detection, or so wicked as to be 
deterred by no considerations whatever from the execution of their 
designs. 
We could point to innumerable cases where the administering 
of poison has been suspected by the medical attendant or relative, 
and it has been detected in the chemist’s laboratory, but we feel 
sure it is unnecessary to adduce any evidence in proof of this to 
our readers; to them it must be a fact perfectly familiar in the 
annals of crime. Link by link the untiring chemist has formed 
the chain of evidence; here tracing the death-potion in the tissues, 
there in the stomach, there again in the heart or vascular system ; 
and when one reads the accounts of these trials, how unerringly the 
guilt is almost in every case brought home to the heartless trans- 
gressor, it appears surprising that there should still remain men 
msensate enough to suppose they can tamper with the human 
system without certain detection. 
Added to this facility for tracing poison, the microscopic study 
of the blood-corpuscles of the vertebrata has given additional means 
for exposing murder and violence, and recently a third method, 
more exquisite than any hitherto known, has been added to the 
list of silent, invisible detectives. 
When our correspondent, Mr, H. C. Sorby, first published in 
