In what way were the opinions of the Crown's medical witnesses to be judged sounder than those held by the opposite side? Not one of the seven had ever seen a single case of strychnine poisoning in the human subject—some had never even witnessed an experiment on animal life—and several confessed to but very limited experience of simple tetanus. Yet no less than three of the medical witnesses called by the Defence had been present at numerous post-mortem examinations, where deadi had been admittedly due to strychnia. Professor Nunnely, the target of so much of the Attorney-General's abuse and the victim of the Lord Chief Justice's privileged, courteous insults, had made postmortem examinations of two persons carried off by this poison; had experimented with strychnine on forty animals; and with other poisons on two thousand more; thus claiming a body of experimental research one hundredfold greater than that possessed by all the other doctors and professors together. Nevertheless, his evidence was spoken of by the Prosecution in terms well calculated to excite contempt.
Professors Taylor and Rees, called for the Crown, pronounced that the fiftieth part of a grain of strychnia cannot be detected. Yet Professor Herapath of the Bristol Medical School, and Professor Letheby, Medical Officer of Health to the City of London, stated for the Defence that the fifty-thousandth part can!
Professor Taylor's testimony was, without doubt, the mainspring that acted so powerfully on the minds of the jury. Some twenty-three years ago, he had experimented with strychnia on twelve wild rabbits—'which is the only personal knowledge that I have of strychnia, as it affects animal life'—but had never seen any human being exposed to its influence. And 'though I met a case of tetanus in the human subject years ago, I have not had much experience in such matters'. He constantly failed to detect the presence of strychnia after poisoning animals, even when the dose was as much as a grain and a half; and had never thought to conduct experiments on dogs or cats, though they resemble man far more closely in that they vomit, whereas rabbits do not. Professor Taylor has published The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence—in part a treatise on poisons—and diere one may find listed experimental facts and the reports of several deaths by strychnia. But none of this is the product of his own research— the Professor's light shines with borrowed rays, like the deceptive Moon.
Of Sir Benjamin Brodie little need or can be said. Though he had considerable experience of tetanus, he also excelled in tact and avoided any positive statement that could contradict other people's opinions, qualifying his evidence with such phrases as ' according to my knowledge,' 'so far as I have seen,' 'at least so it has been in my experience,' 'I believe I remember cases,'—and so forth. He took the safe course of a man who, being himself benighted, will not pretend to set a neighbour's foot on the right path. But Professor Taylor's forthright evidence was even at variance with itself. In reply to the question: 'Were the symptoms and appearances in Cook's case the same as diose you have observed in the animals which you poisoned with strychnia?' he declared: 'They were.' Yet he had repeatedly laid down that no prognosis of the symptoms likely to ensue from the human consumption of strychnia can rest on those observed in lower animals similarly poisoned; so that even his youthful experiments with rabbits were irrelevant here.
To quote a tithe of the evidence on the above subjects would protract our comment far beyond convenient limits. Indeed, we find so much that is criticizable in the evidence, the addresses of Counsel, and the charge to the jury, that our own patience as well as that of our readers would soon suffer exhaustion. However, a letter written to The Times by F. Crage Calvert, Esq., F.C.C., a Cheshire chemist, about his discovery of strychnia in the bodies of several wilfully poisoned hounds—at least three weeks after death —convinces us that Professor Taylor's theory of 'perfect absorption' is quite fallacious. So does another written to the same newspaper by Professor Herapath, the greatest analytic chemist now alive among us, whom the Attorney-General browbeat and flustered during the trial. He once found strychnia in a fox dead for over two months.
How Professor Herapath came to be subpoenaed by the Prosecution is a curious story. According to an anonymous letter received by the Crown lawyers from Keynsham in Somersetshire, the Professor had publicly declared: 'I have no doubt that there was strychnia in Cook's body, but Professor Taylor could not find it.' Professor Hcrapath was known to be at loggerheads with Professor Taylor, whom he looked upon as an ignorant theorist, and seems to have incautiously made some such remark to Mr Twining, the Mayor of Bristol, and a party of his friends. Yet it had been based on partial newspaper accounts of the case, including a most inaccurate one printed by The Illustrated Times. This anonymous letter also reported him as saying: 'A word from mc would hang that man!'—but the remark was, in effect, made by Mr Twining. The Attorney-General eagerly seized on Professor Herapath's observation which he had read as meaning that strychnine might evade the analysis of even the most experienced analyst; whereas, in truth, the Professor had merely referred to Professor Taylor's incompetence. At the trial, the Attorney-General realized his mistake, and was skilful enough to repair it with Pharisaic ingenuity by entangling Professor Herapath in his talk.
If we may give our studied opinion for what it is worth, founding it upon that of Mr John Robinson, the well-known lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, and others, equally distinguished, we will say that the sore on Cook's body—where, according to the evidence, excoriation of a syphilitic scar had been rubbed off— was well capable of inducing tetanus, especially in one who frequented stables; for stables breed the disease. To this we will, however, add that the nightly recurrence of Cook's attacks rather suggests an obscure nervous disorder—'epileptic convulsions with tetanic symptoms,' as Dr Bamford called it—which, in his weakened state, Cook could not resist. Dr Palmer, in all probability, had assisted this weakness, for a felonious object, possibly by introducing tartar emetic into Cook's toast-and-water; but never, we are convinced, did he foresee or desire that it should have a fatal ending.
It may be objected that epilepsy seldom makes its first appearance in mature persons and that, if Cook had previously experienced epileptic seizures, this fact would surely have come out in the trial. But such epileptic seizures as occur only late at night, when the patient is suffering from gastric disturbances, or has worked himself up to an anxious frame of mind, often escape general remark; and if Dr Jones, a capable physician and Cook's country neighbour, diagnosed epilepsy, he must have suspected a proneness to this unusual disorder. The suggestion that Dr Palmer procured three grains, and then another six grains, of strychnia— in his own home-town, too—for the purpose of murdering his friend, afterwards adjusting the dose so nicely as to leave no vestige of the crime—this seems to us one of the most far-fetched that we have ever heard.
Chapter XXII
THE VERDICT
MANY incidents in this trial, we confess, surprised us unpleasantly. Mr Baron Alderson, who shared Lord Chief Justice Campbell's partiality for the Prosecution, made even less attempt to conceal it, and frequently amused himself by suggesting questions to Mr James, Q.C., the Counsel for the Crown. He would raise his hands in feigned astonishment if evidence favourable to Dr Palmer was elicited by cross-examination; stare at the jury with a look of incredulity and contempt if Serjeant Shee called attention to such evidence; and assist the Lord Chief Justice in overruling almost every legal objection raised by the Defence. Once, when Mr Serjeant Slice asked a medical witness: 'Where are the pathionic glands?', Mr Baron Alderson started angrily from his seat and exclaimed in loud tones: 'Humbug!' To another similar question he answered for the witness: 'You will find that in any encyclopaedia.'