i882.3 
The Lessons of the Lamson Case . 
227 
to poisons is an unconsidered trifle in comparison with those 
who perish by pistol shots, or by dynamite and the like. 
However criminally disposed a man may be, he can ex- 
hibit poison to those only who live with him, or with 
whom at least he comes in very close contact. The burglar 
or the garotter cannot administer a dose of aconitine or 
strychnine to a substantial citizen on his way home from 
business. Potassium cyanide will not enable demagogues 
to blow up ships or prisons. Further, the legitimate uses of 
firearms and explosives are much fewer than those of the 
numerous and heterogeneous bodies which are included under 
the name “poisons.” It must also be remembered that 
many bodies, though deadly if introduced into the stomach, 
are so peculiar in their taste and smell, or in the effects they 
produce upon any article of food or drink with which they 
may be mixed, that no person is likely to swallow them. 
We would therefore say if the common sale of sulphuric and 
hydrochloric acids is to be prohibited, a thousand times more 
should restrictions be placed upon the traffic in revolvers, 
cartridges, and dynamite. Such articles should be made 
inaccessible to all whose purposes and past career are not 
absolutely free from suspicion. Next to explosives the sale 
of anaesthetics should be most carefully watched. 
The third point we have to consider in connection with 
the Lamson case is of a very different kind. We were 
astonished to find Lord Chief Justice Coleridge quoted to 
show the untrustworthiness of experiments upon animals as 
regards the aCtion of poisons. We must utterly refuse to 
acknowledge him as an authority on such a question, be- 
lieving as we do that he has no personal experience in this 
matter, and knowing his strong anti-viviseCtionist bias. It 
was, we believe, Lord Coleridge who sought to defend anti- 
viviseCtionists from the charge of inconsistency by the thread- 
bare plea that “ one wrong does not justify another.” Now, 
even admitting, which we cannot, that experiments upon 
animals are a “wrong,” they are so rare in occurrence, and 
in most cases they infliCI so little pain, that they sink into 
insignificance. We would therefore remind the Lord Chief 
Justice that an Authority, generally considered higher than 
that of the judicial bench, exhorted the fanatics of old to get 
rid of the beam in their own eye before dealing with the 
mote in that of their neighbour. 
But why or when should experiments with poisons upon 
animals be untrustworthy ? Only if such poisons affedl 
different animals differently, and if we do not know their 
exabt adtion upon the species we sel e<5t for the experiment. 
