8o 
POISONS : THEIR EFFECTS AND DETECTION. [§ 48. 
water all round, after which they all fell asleep, and, so far as the father 
and mother were concerned, remained completely unconscious until 
Monday morning. 
A man who occupied the house opposite the house tenanted by the 
last-mentioned family informed the narrator (Dr Reid) that on Sunday 
morning the family, consisting of four, were taken seriously ill with a 
feeling of sickness and depression accompanied by headache ; and he 
also stated that for some time they had smelt what he termed a “ fire 
stink ” issuing from the cellar. 
The cottage in which the family lived that had suffered so severely 
was situated abo*ut 20 or 30 yards from the shaft of a disused coal mine, 
and was the end house of a row of cottages. It had a cellar opening 
into the outer air, but this opening was usually covered over by means of 
a piece of wood. The adjoining house to this, the occupants of which 
had for some time suffered from headache, although to a less extent, had 
a cellar with a similar opening, but supplied with an ill-fitting cover. 
The house on the opposite side of the road, in which the two birds were 
found dead, had a cellar opening both at the front and the back ; but 
both these openings, until a little before the occurrence detailed, had 
been kept closed. The cellars in all cases communicated with the houses 
by means of doors opening into the kitchens. According to the general 
account of the occupants, the cellars had smelled of fire stink,” which, 
in their opinion, proceeded from the adjoining mine. 
The shaft of the disused mine communicated with a mine in working 
order, and, to encourage the ventilation in this mine, a furnace had for 
some weeks been lit and suspended in the shaft. This furnace had set 
fire to the coal in the disused mine, and smoke had been issuing from 
the shaft for four weeks previously. Two days previous to the inquiry 
the opening of the shaft had been closed over with a view to extinguish 
the fire. 
Dr Reid considered, from the symptoms and all the circumstances of 
the case, that the illness was due to carbon monoxide gas penetrating into 
the cellars from the mine, and from thence to the living and sleeping 
rooms. A sample of the air yielded 0'015 per cent, of carbon monoxide, 
although the sample had been taken after the cellar windows had been 
open for twenty-four hours. 
§ 48. Penetration of Carbon Monoxide. —It is not always sufficient 
to detect carbon monoxide in the blood to establish death from that 
gas, for circumstances may arise under which a corpse is exposed to 
either coal gas or carbon monoxide gas. Wachholz and Lemberger 1 
placed the bodies of still-born infants in glass vessels and passed CO 
through the vessels ; in half an hour the blue cadaverous spots became 
1 “ De la penetration de l’oxyde de Carbon,” Ann. d’Hygiene publique, 4^ me 
ser., iii. 175. 
