i88a.] 
The Lessons of the Lamson Case . 
225 
VII. THE LESSONS OF THE LAMSON CASE. 
C>i£. 
* N referring to this celebrated trial we shall take an 
entirely different point of view from that of our con- 
temporaries. The questions of the guilt of the prisoner, 
the degree of his demerits, and the effects which his con- 
demnation may have upon his relatives, we must put aside as 
completely as our modern humanitarians in such cases do 
the sufferings of the vidtim, the distress of his friends, and 
the feeling of insecurity occasioned to society at large. We 
have merely to ask how are the interests and the duties of 
Science affedted by this murder and the subsequent trial. 
We must in the first place notice the plea raised that the 
alkaloid discovered in the corpse of the youth John, and 
which when administered to mice produced the well-known 
symptoms of poisoning by aconitine, may have been one of 
those newly-discovered bodies, the ptomaines. It is perfectly 
true that our knowledge of these bodies is still very rudi- 
mentary : we neither know the exadt circumstances under 
which they are produced, nor the exadt nature of their adtion 
when administered to warm-blooded animals. But our 
knowledge, as far as it goes, is decidedly against the theory 
that the substance isolated by the chemical experts from the 
body could he a ptomaine. The symptoms observed in ex- 
periments with these compounds have more closely approached 
those of poisoning by strychnine than by aconitine. 
We must also remember that this theory does not account 
for the death of the youth under circumstances which 
strongly indicated the adtion of a poisonous alkaloid. But 
a pradtical lesson to be drawn here is the danger of incom- 
plete researches, especially on such subjedts. Half-knowledge 
may readily serve the purposes of an advocate, and enable 
him at least to bewilder the not too clear mind of the British 
juryman. But how is a more complete knowledge to be 
obtained ? We do not see any possible way save by experi- 
ments upon animals — in otherwords, by what is now shrieked 
at as vivisedtion. We ought to know not merely the chemi- 
cal characteristics, but the physiological adtion of every 
“ptomaine,” if these bodies, like legion, are many. To this 
point we shall have to return below. 
Another very important consideration is forced upon us 
by the presentment of the jury in the Lamson case, and by 
the outcry in the political and literary papers anent the sale 
of poisons. There is reason to believe that any additional 
