March 15,1873.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
73 T 
dry the attrition of the cross-hars of the bed over one 
another from getting- in and out of bed would be likely 
to cast dry particles on the floor. If nearly all the soft 
soap and arsenic had been used by Mrs. Dodds on the 
bedstead, about 300 grains of arsenic must be there. 
This, by trampling on the floor and on the cai’pet, 
might be raised as dust floating in the air, and, like 
Scheele’s green wall-papers, might cause irritation and 
dryness in the throat and eyes, and, by means of the 
lungs, become absorbed into the system, but could not 
get into the contents of the stomach. No doubt the 
quantity of arsenic was much greater than could be 
rubbed off any wall-paper. 
In his speech for the defence, Mr. Campbell Forster 
urged among other things the quantity of arsenically 
poisoned dust there -would be floating about the room 
arising from the attrition of the large quantity of arsenic 
and soap put upon the bedstead. Every time the child 
ran about the room, played with his toys, or j umped into 
bed a cloud of these poisonous atoms must have arisen 
and been inhaled by him, as proved to be, a delicate, 
susceptible boy. These atoms, inhaled into the lungs, 
-would enter the circulation of the blood, and every 
part of the substance of the viscera would become 
tainted by arsenical poisoning. Much of that inhaled would 
adhere to the tongue and moist parts of the mouth and 
the throat, and be swallowed with the saliva into the 
stomach, and after five days and nights, while ill in bed, 
of such constant influences, was it surprising that as 
much as 26 grains of arsenic had been found in the 
child’s stomach after death ? The child might accident¬ 
ally have drunk water or milk from the poisonous jug, 
and thus have become poisoned. It was also proved 
that when ill a prescription had been made up for him 
by Dr. Kilburn, and also by Mr. Chalmers’s assistant, 
.consisting of bismuth and prussic acid, and these poisons 
w r ere on the same shelf with the arsenic bottle, and 
closely adjacent, and it was possible that some unfortu¬ 
nate mistake had been made in the bottle and that this 
.arsenic might have been administered as medicine. 
The jury returned a verdict of guilty and the pri¬ 
soner was sentenced to death. 
The Useful Plants of India: with Notices of their 
Chief Value in Commerce, Medicine, and the Arts. 
By Col. Heber Drury. Second edition ; with addi¬ 
tions and corrections. London: W. H. Allen and 
Co. 1873. 
Nearly fifteen years having elapsed since the publica¬ 
tion of the first edition of this useful book, much has, 
during that time, been added to our knowledge of the 
■vegetable wealth of our Indian possessions. The atten¬ 
tion of the local governments has been called to the 
subject, and much has been and is being done, not only 
in preserving the forests, which are of great value in 
both a climatological and an economical point of view, 
but also in introducing foreign trees and herbaceous 
plants suited to the climate. The prodigious fecundity 
of the country may be inferred from the fact that we 
have in this volume an enumeration of 600 trees, shrubs, 
and herbs possessed of more or less useful properties. 
They are arranged in alphabetical order, the natural 
■ order of each species being given, followed by its En¬ 
glish and native names; then a sufficiently full descrip¬ 
tion, with reference to previously published diagnoses 
and plates; and, finally, an account of its medical and 
economic uses. In the case of the more important 
species, native or introduced, these latter items are given 
at considerable length. Among officinal plants omitted 
in the first, but included in the second edition, the cul¬ 
ture of which is rapidly increasing in commercial im¬ 
portance, may be mentioned the cinchona, tea, cacao, 
tobacco, and the Australian eucalyptus. We do not 
however,, find any reference to the introduction and cul¬ 
tivation in India of the ipecacuanha, which seems likely 
to rival even that of cinchona in importance. An illus¬ 
tration of the amount of useful information contained in 
the book is afforded by Col. Drury’s account of the 
different kinds of Indian ebony. Under the head of 
“ Diospyros melanoxylon,” he says, “Thebark is astrin¬ 
gent, and, reduced to an impalpable powder, is applied to 
ulcerations, and, mixed with black pepper, is administered 
in dysentery. The true ebony of commerce is obtained 
from the 1). ebenum (Linn.), a native of Ceylon ; but in 
fact other species scarcely differing from one another 
yield this timber. This species yields a fine kind of 
ebony; it is only the centre of the larger trees that is 
black and valuable, and the older the trees the better 
the quality. The outside wood is white and spongy, 
which, decaying or destroyed by insects, displays the 
central ebony. Sir E. Tennent has some valuable re¬ 
marks upon the different species of ebony growing in 
Ceylon. The true ebony, D. ebenum, grows in great 
abundance throughout all the flat country west of Trin- 
comalee. It is a different species from the ebony of the 
Mauritius, D. reticulata , and excels it and all others in 
the evenness and intensity of its colour. There is another 
cabinet-wood of extreme beauty, the D. ebenaster , in 
which the prevailing black is stained with stripes of 
rich brown, approaching to yellow and pink. The most 
valuable cabinet-wood of the island, resembling rose¬ 
wood, but much surpassing it in beauty and durability, 
and which has at all times been in the greatest repute 
in Ceylon, is the D. lursuta. The D. montana (Roxb.) 
is a timber variegated with dark and white veins ; it is 
very hard and durable. The D. tomentosa (Roxb.) is a 
native of the northern parts of Bengal; the wood is 
black, hard, and heavy. Roxburgh compares this latter 
tree to a cypress, from its tall and elegant form. The 
leaves all fall off in the cold season. The D. calycina 
(Bedd.) has been found in the Tinnevelly district and 
southern provinces of Madura, being very abundant up to 
3000 feetof elevation. It is calledin those districts ; Vellay 
Toveray,’ and yields a valuable light-coloured wood 
much used in those parts.” The appendices to the volume 
embrace reports on the culture of the bamboo, cinchona, 
indigo, and other vegetable products, a table of exports 
and their value, and index of Ilindostanee, Bengalee, 
Tamil, Teloogoo, and Malayalim synonyms. The volume 
is altogether indispensable to any one interested in the 
natural history of our vast Indian Empire. 
Change of Air and Scene : A Physician’s Hints, with 
Notes of Excursions for Health amongst the Watering- 
places of the Pyrenees, France, Switzerland, Corsica, 
and the Mediterranean. By Alfiionse Donne, M.D., 
Rector of the Academy of Montpellier. London: 
Henry S. King. 1872. 
“ Running to and fro upon the earth ” has increased 
our knowledge in many ways, but in none more than in 
the therapeutic virtues of climate and mineral waters. 
Medical climatology, since the publication some thirty- 
five years ago of Sir James Clark’s well-known work, has 
become a branch of professional literature, and not a 
year elapses without the accession to it of one or more 
volumes. 
Dr. Alphonse Donne’s treatise is one of the most ac¬ 
ceptable of these. Himself an accomplished teacher and 
practitioner of the physician’s art, he has had expe¬ 
rience, in his own person as well as in that of his pa¬ 
tients, of the curative virtues of the health-resorts of 
south-western Europe. He can determine with accuracy 
the mean temperature of the climate as well as the che¬ 
mical properties of the waters characteristic of those 
places. He can indicate with skill the peculiar types of 
malady in which a particular health-resort may prove 
