Full report of the trial of Thomas Hall for the murder of Captain Henry Cain : Before his honor Mr. Justice Williams, at the Supreme Court, Dunedin, January, 1887.

  • Hall, Thomas, -1887?
Date:
MDCCCLXXXVII
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Full report of the trial of Thomas Hall for the murder of Captain Henry Cain : Before his honor Mr. Justice Williams, at the Supreme Court, Dunedin, January, 1887. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    toms were sickness and vomiting, and were •quite inconsistent with her condition. I ultimately ascertained to my satisfaction what she suffered from, and from the 15th of August onward she progressed steadily to recovery, iihough she suffered depressing effects for some months afterwards. Before last year I had no actual experience of antimonial poisoning. If one of my answers yesterday was that the age and the condition of the patient affected the symptoms, I wish to correct that by saying they do not. After a large dose of antimony the whole or nearly all the poison would be rejected. A person has recovered after taking 468 grains in a dose. It is possible that in one remarkable case in ■which a large quantity of antimony was taken, mustard had to be administered to produce vomiting. When speaking of large doses I was not speaking of ounce doses. From 15 to 20 grains have been taken by people without pro- ducing disastrous results. Very large doses amounting from 15 to 30 grains ai:e reported to have been given, and I presume repeated in the treatment of certain cases. Antimony has been found to be extremely variable in its effects, judging from recorded cases. I have met with no case in which a person suffering from the dis eases from which Cain suffered has taken anti- mony, and have no actual knowledge of its effect upon such cases. Since this case cropped up I have read a good deal about antimony in standard works, and according to them it pro- duces widely different effects on different pet- sons. Mr Chapman : Is it not the case, looking at the extreme variation of results in recorded cases, that it is very much a matter of specula- tion what effect it would produce on a given in- dividual ? Witness: When given in acute inflammatory diseases the patient can tolerate very much more than a healthy person could. That is also the case with aconite in fever cases. The symptoms produced by antimony are pretty well known. Mr Chapman: But supposing you had tha opportunity to experiment upon those 12 gentle- men, and gave them all the same dose, is it not the case that it would produce varying effects upon different individuals ? Witness : I should say it is only a matter of degree, provided they got the same dose. The use of antimony in medicine is a matter over which medical authorities at different dates have differed widely. I believe there are some who -even to this day prescribe antimony freely, but they are comparatively few. It is the congestive kind of kidney disease that generally accom- panies heart disease. I never noticed any of- f entive smell in Captain Cain's room. The room was particularly well ventilated. The nurses might have experienced an offensive smell though I did not. RE-EXAMINED. Mr Haggitt: Has anything you have been asked to-day altered the opinion you expressed yesterday as to the effect of a small dose of antimony administered to a person in the con- edition Captain Cain was during his life?—No. Although it may be a fact that under certain circumstances antimony may be administered without actually causing harm, if a person has heart disease, coupled with kidney disease and dropsy, I understand you to say that it could not be administered to him without causing harm ?—It could not be. Witness (examination resumed): The effect of antimony upon a person suffering from those diseases would be to cause great depression and to accelerate death. The cases in which anti- mony has been administered without injury have been cases of inflammatory fever. The age of a patient does not affect the symptoms in a case of antimonial poisoning, I should say ; that is to say, the symptoms in a child would not be different from the symptoms in an adult, but an old and diseased person would succumb before all the symptoms which would occur in a healthy person would show themselves. It is dangerous under any circumstances to administer antimony to an old person, and it is recognised that it must not be given even medicinally to an old person. No medical man prescribed for Captain Cain except myself. I never prescribed antimony for him. There were about 2| dracms of chlorodyne ia the 8oz bottle, and the quantity of morphia in that would be very small. There would be about the 15th of a grain of opium in each dose, and 16 doses in the bottle. One grain of opium might make a man in Captain Cain's condition sick—from one to three grains would; and there would not be quite a grain of opium in the whole bottle. At one time I ordered that Captaia Cain should have nothing but champagne, as he could not retain food. I intended that he should have at that time about a quart a day, and he was allowed a little other stimulants as well. If he took nothing but champagne he would probably he allowed a little more than a quart a day. Senile gangrene was not a cause of fatal exhaustion in Captain Cain. The captain had suffered from gangrene 18 months before, but it had healed up, and only one gangrenous spot broke out during the last illness. Paia was not a feature of Captain Cain's case, and pain is a feature of Bright's disease, and to- wards zhe end the pain sometimes became in- tense. I told Captain Cain he had dropsy, bufc do not remember telling him he had kidney dis- ease. I think I told Captain Cain at Watkins* chemist shop that he was suffering from dropsy, but I do not remember the date. To Mr Chapman : I may have conversed with Captain Cain about his dropsy more than once, but I cannot remember doing so. I may have told other members of the family that the captain had dropsy. Acute pain is not common in Bright's disease, but a certain amount of dull aching pain across the back may be said to be characteristic of it. Dr Drew (a medical practitioner and surgeon, residing at Timaru), examined by Mr Haggitt, deposed : I am surgeon at the Timaru Hospital. I knew Captain Cain personally and some of his friends intimately. I saw Captain Cain on the 28th of January, the day before he died. I called simply as a friend to spe him. Captain Cain was sitting up in bed. He seemed to be