§§ II, 12.] METHODS OF CHEMICALLY DETECTING POISONS. 15 
minds. It may, however, be truly said that Marsh was the first who 
perfected the test and brought it prominently forward. 
§ 11. Matthieu Joseph Bonaventura Orfila must be considered the 
father of modern toxicology. His great work, Traite de Toxicologie, 
was first published in 1814, and went through many editions. Orfila’s 
chief merit was the discovery that poisons were absorbed and accumu¬ 
lated in certain tissues—a discovery which bore immediate fruit, and 
greatly extended the means of seeking poisons. Before the time of 
Orfila, a chemist not finding anything in the stomach would not have 
troubled to examine the liver, the kidney, the brain, or the blood. The 
immense number of experiments which Orfila undertook is simply 
marvellous. Some are of little value, and teach nothing accurately 
as to the action of poisons—as, for example, many of those in which he 
tied the gullet in order to prevent vomiting, for such are experiments 
under entirely unnatural conditions ; but there are still a large number 
which form the very basis of our pathological knowledge. 
Orfila’s method of experiment was usually to take weighed or 
measured quantities of poison, to administer them to animals, and then 
after death—first carefully noting the changes in the tissues and organs 
—to attempt to recover by chemical means the poison administered. 
In this way he detected and recovered nearly all the organic and 
inorganic poisons then known ; and most of his processes are, with 
modifications and improvements, in use at the present time. 1 
§ 12. The discovery of the alkaloids at the commencement of the 
nineteenth century certainly gave the poisoner new weapons ; yet the 
same processes (slightly modified) which separated the alkaloids from 
plants also served to separate them from the human body. In 1803 
Derosne discovered narcotine and morphine, but he recognised neither 
the difference between these two substances, nor their basic properties. 
Sertiirner from 1805 devoted himself to the study of opium, and made 
a series of discoveries. Kobiquet, in 1807, recognised the basic characters 
of narcotine. In 1818 Pelletier and Caventou separated strychnine ; 
in 1819, brucine ; and in the same year delphinine was discovered 
simultaneously by Brande, Lassaigne, and Feneuille. Coniine was 
recognised by Giesecke in 1827, and in the following year, 1828, 
nicotine was separated by Reimann and Posselt. In 1832 Robiquet 
discovered codeine ; and in 1833 atropine, aconitine, and hyoscyamine 
were distinguished by Geiger and Hesse. Since then, every year has 
1 Orfila’s chief works are as follows :— 
Traite, des Poisons. 2 vols., 8vo. Paris, 1814. 
Lemons de Chimie, appliquees d la Med. Pratique. lGmo. Brussels, 1830. 
Memoire sur la Nicotine et la Conicine. Paris, 1851. 
Lemons de la Med. Legale. 8vo. Paris, 1821. 
Traite des Exhumations Juridiques, et Considerations sur les Changements Physiques 
que les Cadavres eprouvent en se pourrissant. 2 tom. Paris, 1831. 
