A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred S. Taylor.

Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred S. Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    A MANUAL OF MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. POISONING. CHAPTER I. WHAT IS A POISON? ( A POISON is commonly defined to be a substance which when ad- ministered in small quantity is capable of acting deleteriously on the I body. It is obvious that this definition is too restricted for the pur- I poses of medical jurisprudence. It would, if admitted, exclude a very I large class of substances the poisonous properties of which cannot be I disputed. If we examine the list of irritant poisons, we shall find that many of these, more especially the salts of lead, copper, tin, zinc, and antimony, are only poisonous when administered in very large doses : —they have but a very feeble action when taken in small quantity. Nitre, cream of tartar, and pearlash are capable of acting as poisons, and have destroyed life; but only in those cases where about an ounce of either salt has been exhibited. On the other hand, it is well- known that death has proceeded from the exhibition of a few grains only, of arsenic or corrosive sublimate. It is not necessarj’ to extend these remarks, or to make further com- I parisons on the action of different poisons. In a medico-legal view, { whether a person dies from the effects of an ounce of nitre, or of five I grains of arsenic, is a matter of little importance. Each substance must i l>e regarded as a poison, differing from the other only in its degree of J activity and perhaps in its mode of operation. The result is the same; i death is caused by the substance taken, and the quantity required to I kill cannot therefore be made a ground for distinguishing a poisonous 1 from a non-poisonous substance. If, then, a medical witness is asked.