On poisoning by tartarized antimony : with medico-legal observations on the cases of Ann Palmer and others / by Alfred S. Taylor.

  • Taylor, Alfred Swaine, 1806-1880.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On poisoning by tartarized antimony : with medico-legal observations on the cases of Ann Palmer and others / by Alfred S. Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    medicinal and poisonous action of this compound, or between a medicinal and poisonous dose. The age and constitution of the patient, even in cases in which the same dose is adminis- tered, influence the result. Infants appear to he especially predisposed to the noxious action of this drug, and some adults suffer, from an ordinary dose, symptoms and effects of a very severe kind. It may be stated generally, that a medicine in a large dose is a poison, and a poison in a small dose is a medicine : hence there can be no definite boundary between a medicine and a poison. The greater number of substances described as medicines, may act like poisons according to the dose or circumstances under which they are administered. The proof of the crime of poisoning should rest, therefore, upon the intention with which the substance is administered, as well as on the effects produced. A man may administer tartarized antimony in medicinal doses with good or evil in- tention. Ilis intention may be not to remove disease, but to destroy life. He may administer it secretly, under circum- stances in which its lawful use would certainly not be re- quired : he may continue to use it at intervals in medicinal doses, even when its dangerous effects are clearly manifested by symptoms, and when any medical man, dealing bond fide with a patient, would, if he had prescribed it, immediately withdraw it as a medicine. Is such an act as this to be covered by that thin veil of medical sophistry which was spread over it in the case of William Palmer, apparently because he was a man of education and a member of the medical profession ? Is it to be received as a reasonable or safe doctrine for society, that tartarized antimony is a medicine and not a poison, be- cause it has been given in some instances in large doses, without causing death ? Or, that provided the doses are what may be called “ medicinal,” there can be no act of poisoning ? If a criminal act of the worst dye—the professional use of re- medial agents to destroy life—is to be thus frittered away by a definition, murder by poisoning might be carried on with impunity throughout this country, whenever a motive for crime presented itself; and the greater the skill and the more perfect the cunning used in the perpetration of a crime, the more surely might a wealthy and educated criminal rely l /