80 
POISONING BY ARSENIC. 
Case 3. —On the 21st of September, I was again sum* 
moned in haste to see a valuable chesnut cart-mare, five 
years old, which had been purchased to take the place of the 
one that had died, but before my arrival she also was dead. 
I called at Gazlev Hall, but found that Mr. Bird was in Lon- 
don, I was requested, however, by Mr. Bird, senr., to spare 
for no reasonable expense to find out, if possible, the cause 
of death. 
On the following day Mr. Metherell of Spalding and 
myself made a post-mortem examination and found all the 
organs healthy with the exception of the stomach, the 
mucous membrane of which presented such appearances as 
to justify our opinion of this animal also having been poi¬ 
soned. The stomach &c., as you are aware have been for¬ 
warded to Professor Tuson for analysis. 
I may here add that the other horses on the farm were 
fed on the clover and that they likewise drank at the same 
trough as those which died. None of them, however, have 
as vet been out of health. 
It appears that there is a long iron pipe which conveys 
the water under ground from one yard to the other, and this 
I was told had been repaired comparatively recently with 
white lead, tow, and tar-cord. At the time of the occur¬ 
rence of these cases it is very likely the water would remain 
for some days in this pipe, owing to the cattle and horses 
lying out in the fields at night, but I cannot attribute any 
mischief to this, the symptoms and post-mortem appear¬ 
ances being so completely unlike lead poisoning. Nor can 
it be possible that the water lying in the pipe could imbibe 
sufficient arsenic even supposing that the lead contained this 
substance. 
You will be surprised that an analysis was not resorted 
to in the second case, but my employer thought with me that 
even if the animal was poisoned such was accidental. Indeed 
we thought it not unlikely that the carter had given some 
medicinal agent to improve the animal's coat, and thus un¬ 
wittingly destroyed life. It is much to be regretted that 
men having the charge of horses should so often have re¬ 
course to such means to add to the animal's good appear¬ 
ance. 
Since the death of the chesnut mare I have been informed 
by the foreman that two other sudden deaths occurred at an 
adjoining farm, also belonging to Mr. Bird, and at about the 
same time. One was a horse and the other a fat beast. It 
appears that the animals were left well at night, and both 
