37^ POISONS : THEIR EFFECTS AND DETECTION. [^ 442 . 
convulsions were added, especially of the face ; the eyes were also 
prominent; twenty minutes after he had taken the dose vomiting came 
on, after which he again felt better. 
He took dose No. 4, and had the same repetition of symptoms, but 
in the interval between the doses he felt weaker and weaker ; he had no 
energy, and felt as if paralysed. No. 5 was taken, and produced, like 
the others, vomiting, after which he felt relieved. Neither he nor his 
wife seemed all this time to have had any suspicion that the medicine 
was really doing harm, but thought that the effects were due to its 
constant rejection by vomiting, so, in order to prevent vomiting with 
No. 6, he drank much cold water. After thus taking the medicine, 
the patient seemed to fall into a kind of slumber, with great restlessness ; 
about an hour and a half afterwards he cried, “ I am chilled ; my heart, 
my heart is terribly cold. I am dying ; I am poisoned.” His whole 
body was covered with perspiration ; he was now convulsed, and lost 
sight and hearing ; his eyes were shut, his lips cracked and dry, he 
could scarcely open his mouth, and he was extremely cold, and thought 
he was dying. The breathing was difficult and rattling : from time to 
time the muscular spasms came on. His wife now made a large quantity 
of hot, strong black tea, which she got him to drink with great difficulty ; 
although it was hot, he did not know whether it was hot or cold. About 
five minutes afterwards he vomited, and did so several times ; this 
apparently relieved him, and he sank into a quiet sleep ; during the 
night he did not urinate. In the morning the wife went to Dr Carl 
Meyer, described the symptoms, and accused the medicine. So convinced 
was Dr Meyer that the medicine did not cause the symptoms, that he 
poured out a quantity of the same, equal to 4 mgrms. of aconitine 
nitrate, and took it himself in some wine, to show that it was harmless, 
and ordered them to go on with it. The unhappy physician died of 
aconitine poisoning five hours after taking the medicine. 1 In the 
meantime, the woman went home, and her husband actually took a 
seventh but smaller dose, which produced similar symptoms to the 
former, but of little severity ; no more was taken. 
The absence of diarrhoea, and of the pricking sensations so often 
described, is in this case noteworthy. Both diarrhoea and formication were 
also absent in a third case reported by Dr Busscher in the same paper. 
§ 442. The most important criminal case is undoubtedly that of 
Lamson. At the Central Criminal Court, in March 1882, George 
Henry Lamson, surgeon, was convicted of the murder of his brother- 
in-law, I ercy Malcolm John. The victim was a weakly youth of 18 
years of age, paralysed in his lower limbs from old-standing spinal 
disease. The motive for perpetrating the crime was that Lamson, 
1 The symptoms suffered by I)r Meyer are to be found in Neder. Tijdschrift van 
Geneeskunde, 1880, No. 16. 
