440 Slow, Consecutive, and Accumulative Poisoning, [June, 



out occasioning the slightest inconvenience, and at length 

 excited a disease that has terminated fatally ; in the London 

 Medical and Physical Journal for February, 1816, a case is 

 related in which death was occasioned by a chocolate-nut 

 having lodged in the entrance of the appendix vermiformis ; and 

 in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal for July, 1816, 

 we have an analogous case, communicated by Dr. Briggs of 

 Liverpool, where the Appendix cseci sphacelated, owing to the 

 irritation of a human tooth which was found sticking in its 

 cavity. Mr. Children has lately communicated to the Royal 

 Society a case where a concretion in the colon produced death; 

 upon examination it was found to contain a plum-stone, as a 

 nucleus, and to consist of a fine fibrous vegetable substance, 

 from the inner coat enveloping the farina of the oat, and which 

 was derived from the oatmeal upon which the deceased had fed. 

 (Phil. Trans. 1822.) However disposed we may feel, by a forced 

 construction of the term, to consider such agents as slow poisons, 

 it is very evident that they can rarely have been made subser- 

 vient to the purposes of secret poisoning ; although a case 

 occurred in the practice of the author,* in which a girl swallowed 

 six copper pence for the avowed purpose of destroying herself; 

 the coin produced a disease which remained chronic for a very 

 considerable period, when, after a lapse of five years, they were 

 voided, and the young woman recovered. A similar attempt 

 was also made by Theodore Gardelle, after his conviction for 

 the murder of Mrs. King (vide ante) ; he swallowed a number of 

 halfpence, for the purpose of destroying himself, but without any 

 ill effect. Dr. Baillie, in his " Morbid Anatomy," relates an 

 instance where five halfpence had been lodged in a pouch in the 

 stomach for a considerable time, without occasioning any irrita- 

 tion ; and Mr. A. Thomson has also furnished us with two ana- 

 logous cases in children, in one of which the copper coin 

 remained six months in the intestines, and in the other two 

 months. These facts furnish sufficient data to enable the prac- 

 titioner to appreciate the degree of danger attendant upon such 

 agents, and to determine how far they can ever become success- 

 ful instruments in the hands of the assassin.f 



But it has been supposed that certain bodies, as glass, ena- 

 mel, diamonds,! agates, smalt, &c. when administered in the 

 form of powder, so lacerate the membranes of the stomach by the 

 sharpness of their particles, as slowly to destroy life ; and upon 

 the same principle, it has been asserted, that human hair, 



" This case is detailed in his ' Pharmacologia,' under the article Cupri Sulphas. 



+ See an interesting paper by Dr. Marcet, in the 12th volume of the Medico-Chirur- 

 gical Transactions, entitled, " Account of a Man who lived Ten Years after having 

 swallowed a number of Clasp Knives." 



J In the reign of Louis XIV. Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, is said to have been 

 poisoned by diamond-dust mixed with powdered sugar. The same substance is enume- 

 rated among other extraordinary poisons, as having been administered in the case of Sir 

 Thomas Overbury. 



