5^4 The Poisoning Case of the [September, 
detedted in the tissues.” This has been repeatedly done, as 
Dr. Taylor has since admitted. 
In summing up all that has preceded we must remember 
that the art of toxicology has made rapid strides since the 
trials of Tawell and Palmer, but that scope for improvement 
still exists. 
Turning for a moment to the stridtly medical evidence 
given, in which the cause of death is inferred from the 
symptoms before death and the appearances afterwards pre- 
sented, we find an amount of discrepancy, and even anta- 
gonism, which is positively painful. If we confine ourselves 
to Palmer’s trial we find the death of Cook successively 
ascribed to poisoning by antimony, to tetanus (traumatic or 
idiopathic), to apoplexy, epilepsy, to convulsions with tetanic 
complications, to angina pedtoris, and to the effects of 
morphia. These varied hypotheses, brought forward by 
persons who could judge only by hearsay, elicited from 
counsel on both sides in turn most severe comments. Said 
the Attorney-General (Sir A. Cockburn), in his reply to the 
defence in Palmer’s case, “ To me it seems a scandal upon 
a learned, distinguished, and liberal profession that men 
should put forward such speculations as these, perverting 
fadts and drawing from them sophistical and unwarrantable 
conclusions, with the view of deceiving a jury. I have the 
greatest respedt for Science, — no man can have more, — but 
I cannot repress my indignation and abhorrence when I see 
it thus perverted and prostituted to the purposes of a parti- 
cular cause in a court of justice.” Again, with reference 
to the suggestion that Cook had died of angina pectoris, he 
speaks of the “ ignorance or presumption ” of the witness 
in question. “ I say ignorance or presumption, or, what is 
worse, an intention to deceive.” One more quotation will 
suffice : — “ I abhor the traffic in testimony to which, I regret 
to say, men of Science sometimes permit themselves to 
condescend.” 
It is, indeed, deeply to be deplored that the slightest room 
should have been given for comments such as these. The 
effedts of such denunciations, and of the exhibitions by 
which they were called forth, have even yet not entirely dis- 
appeared. But did counsel and judges ever ask themselves 
what lies at the root of the party-feeling and the unscrupu- 
lousness thus complained of? Of this hereafter. 
We have yet to inquire whether the analytical chemists 
engaged in these poisoning cases employed all the known 
precautions for eliminating error, and whether, again, they 
observed that discretion which a respedt for public justice, for 
