Читать книгу Treatise on Poisons - Robert Sir Christison - Страница 7

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This subject is purely medico-legal. It comprehends an account of the various kinds of evidence by which the medical jurist is enabled to pronounce whether poisoning in a general sense (that is, without reference to a particular poison), is impossible, improbable, possible, probable, or certain. It likewise comprises an appreciation of the circumstances which usually lead the unprofessional, as well as the professional, to infer correctly or erroneously a suspicion of such poisoning.

Under the present head might likewise be included the history of poisoning, the art of secret poisoning, and some other topics of the like kind. But the want of proper documents, and the unmeasured credulity which has prevailed on the subject of poisoning throughout all ages down to very recent times, has entangled these subjects in so intricate a maze of fable, that a notice of them, sufficiently detailed to interest the reader, would be quite misplaced in this work.

On the art of secret poisoning, however, as having been once an important object of medical jurisprudence, it might be expected that some comments should here be offered. But really I do not see any good reason for wading through the mass of credulous conjectures and questionable facts, which have been collected on the subject, and which have been copied into one modern work after another, for no other cause than that they are of classic origin, or feed our appetite for the mysterious. No one now seriously believes that Henry the Sixth was killed by a pair of poisoned gloves, or Pope Clement the Seventh by a poisoned torch carried before him in a procession, or Hercules by a poisoned robe, or that the operation of poisons can be so predetermined as to commence or prove fatal on a fixed day, and after the lapse of a definite and remote interval. With regard to the noted instances of secret poisoning, which occurred towards the close of the seventeenth century in Italy and France, it is plain to every modern toxicologist, from the only certain knowledge handed down to us of these events, that the actors in them owed their success rather to the ignorance of the age, than to their own dexterity. And as to the refined secrets believed to have been possessed by them, it is sufficient here to say, that although we are now acquainted with ten times as many and ten times as subtle poisons as were known in those days, yet none exist which are endowed with the hidden qualities once so universally dreaded.

The crime of poisoning, from its nature, must always be a secret one. But little apprehension need be entertained of the art of secret poisoning as understood by Toffana or Brinvilliers,^[63] or as it might be improved by a modern imitator. It seems to have escaped the attention of those who have written on the subject, that the practice of such an art requires the knowledge not only of a dexterous toxicologist, but also of a skilful physician; for success must depend on the exact imitation of some natural disease. It is only among medical men, therefore, and among the higher orders of them, that a Saint-Croix can arise now-a days. How little is to be dreaded on that head is apparent from the domestic history of the European kingdoms for the last half century, compared with their history some centuries ago. Few medical men have even been suspected, and those few only upon visionary grounds, and under the impulse of violent political feeling.^[64] In one late instance only, so far as I am aware, has it been proved that the physician’s art was actually prostituted to so fearful a purpose; and the detection of the crime in that case shows how difficult concealment will always be wherever justice is administered rigorously, and medico-legal investigations skilfully conducted.^[65]

Two extraordinary incidents which happened lately in Germany may appear at first sight at variance with these views. I allude to the cases of Anna Margaretha Zwanziger and Margaretha Gottfried, which justly excited much interest where they occurred, and are notorious to continental toxicologists. Zwanziger, while serving as housekeeper in various families in the territory of Bayreuth in Bavaria during the years 1808 and 1809, contrived to administer poison,—sometimes under the instigation of mere revenge or spite, sometimes for the purpose of clearing the way for her schemes of marriage with her masters,—to no fewer than seventeen individuals in the course of nine months; and of these three died.^[66] Gottfried, a woman in affluent circumstances and tolerable station in the town of Bremen, was even more successful. For she pursued her criminal career undiscovered for fifteen years; and when detected in 1828 had murdered actually fourteen persons, and administered poison unsuccessfully to several others. Her motive, as in the case of Zwanziger, was the mere gratification of a malevolent temper, or the removal of supposed obstacles to her matrimonial dreams. In neither of these instances, however, did the criminal possess any particular skill, or observe much measure in her proceedings. The cases of poisoning were of the common kind,—produced by arsenic,—proving in general quickly fatal,—and presenting the ordinary phenomena. I cannot help thinking, therefore, that the events now alluded to prove rather the ineffectiveness of the police where they happened, than the adroitness of the actors by whom they were brought about; and that they constitute no sound objection to the statement, that the art of secret poisoning is now unknown, and is not likely to be again revived.

It must be granted, indeed, that the late discoveries in chemistry and toxicology have made poisons known which might be employed in such a way as to render suspicion unlikely, and to baffle inquiry. But the methods now alluded to are hitherto very little known; they cannot easily be attempted on account of the rarity and difficult preparation of the poisons; they can never be practised except by a person conversant with the minute phenomena of natural disease; and it is no part of the object of this work to make them public.

The evidence, by which the medical jurist is enabled to pronounce on the existence or non-existence of poisoning in general, and to determine the subordinate questions that relate to it, is derived from five sources,—1, the symptoms during life; 2, the appearances in the dead body; 3, the chemical analysis; 4, experiments and observations on animals; and 5, certain moral circumstances, which are either inseparably interwoven with the medical proof, or cannot be accurately appreciated without medical knowledge.