32 ESSAY ON THE RATIONALE OP 



sides, should lead you to doubt whether you should attribute the death 

 of the deceased to arsenic having been administered to her, or to the 

 disease called cholera morbus, then, as to this question, as well as to 

 the other question, the conduct of the prisoner is most material to be 

 taken into consideration ; for he, being a medical man, could not be 

 ignorant of many things as to which ignorance might be shewn in 

 other persons : he could hardly be ignorant of the proper mode of 

 treating cholera morbus, he could not be ignorant that an early burial 

 was not necessary ; and when an operation was to be performed in 

 order to discover the cause of death, he should not have shewn a 

 backwardness to acquiesce in it ; and when it was performing, and he 

 attending, he could not surely be ignorant that it was most material 

 for the purposes of that investigation that the contents of the stomach 

 should be preserved for minute examination."* It is manifest that 

 the learned judge intended these remarks to apply only to cases cir- 

 cumstanced as the case before him was ; for thus to conjoin the mo- 

 ral circumstances with the medical facts, as an element of proof of 

 the poisoning in cases not so circumstanced, appears to be open to 

 objection, since the hypothesis of poisoning is resorted to in order to 

 account for the moral circumstances as well as for the morbid appear- 

 ances, while the moral circumstances are appealed to as corroborative 

 of the evidence of poisoning. 



Suicide and accident are sometimes artfully suggested and plausi- 

 bly urged as the causes of death, where the allegation cannot receive 

 direct contradiction ; and in such cases the truth can be ascertained 

 only by comparison of all the attendant circumstances, some of which, 

 if the defence be false, are commonly found to be irreconcileable with 

 the cause assigned. Although these cases are generally connected 

 with questions of medical jurisprudence, the scientific facts must 

 nevertheless be submitted to the test of experience and common ob- 

 servation, as applied by the mass of mankind in many other cases 

 not less difficult of determination. Such cases, therefore, in their 

 more general aspects and bearings, belong to general jurisprudence, 

 and supply important illustrations of general legal doctrines ; and 

 they, moreover, shew the manner in which such defences are fre- 

 quently repelled by their manifest incompatibility with the general 

 circumstances. 



William Corder was tried at the Bury St. Edmunds Summer As- 

 sizes, 1828, for the murder of Maria Marten. The deceased had 



" Report of the trial, ut supra. 



