PLEADING FOR A SON'S LIFE. 223 



said, " twenty times the dose she took to kill a man. If it 

 be vomited scarcely a pound of arsenic will kill, as may 

 be seen in the mountebanks who devour daily a great deal 

 of it, and suffer scarcely at all 1 . An ounce will not kill a 

 dog, because he vomits it." 



From these statements we must infer that the general 

 term arsenic was applied, as Dioscorides applied it, to the 

 yellow sulphuret which we call orpiment. This contains 

 much free arsenious acid, and is a decided poison, but is 

 much less active than white arsenic, of which a few 

 grains kill. Even of white arsenic, however, horses have 

 been known to take fabulous quantities without fatal re- 

 sult, and there are cases of human recovery from half- 

 ounce doses taken upon a full stomach and speedily re- 

 jected. In the case of Brandonia, vomiting was speedy, 

 and as it was not, according to the medical jurisprudence 

 of the day, possible to detect traces of the poison, Cardan 

 was not without grounds for believing that the deceased 

 had not been actually murdered. 



Again, Jerome pleaded that it was not proven that the 

 poison in the cake taken was put there by his son's wish. 

 He himself denied that it was ; he was at that time re- 

 penting of his purpose. " That, too," he went on to 



1 " Si evomatur vix una libra arsenici interficit hominem, sicut 

 apparet circulatoribus qui magnam quantitatem ejus devorant quo- 

 tidie et nihil penitus loeduntur." Op. cit. p. 1117 



