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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    Witness continued: The effect of antimony upon the human body is depressing, but in a very large dose it acts as an irritant. In small doses it acts partly as an irritant, partly as a depressant, and occasions a large flow of bile, the result of which would be diarrhcea and bilious vwmiting. I believe antimony is quickly absorbed into the body, every soluble poison is quickly absorbed. All the poison that is not re- jected is not absorbed ; probably a good deal of it would be thrown down as an insoluble sulphide into the stomach and bowels. If the patient lives, that may be absorbed, as there are many acids in the bowels which may or may not dis- solve it. The most prominent symptom of anti- monial poisoning is sickness coming on very shortly after the poison is taken ; then you have purging, great exhaustion, and periods of ap- parent recovery in the morning if the poison is not given during the night. Thirst, as is the case in all irritant poisons, is a prominent symp- tom, and also griping of the throat. Mr Haggitt: Taking it as a fact that Captain Cain during the last portion of his illness, say the last fortnight, suffered from nausea, vomiting, diarrhcea, depression, loss of strength, the weak- ness gradually increasing, and taking in con- junction with that the 2^ost mortem appearance you observed, and the fact that on analysis anti- mony was found in the body, what conclusion would you arrive at ?—That antimony had a great deal to do with his death. His Honor: You sav, doctor that you found antimony in the intestines and in the urine as well as in the blood ?—Yes. After the antimony goes into the mouth, what is the ordinary course of things; into the sto- mach first, I suppose ?—Yes, first into the sto- mach ; then it is absorbed into the blood, and acts as a poison there. Part of it would remain in- soluble in the bowels, part would be absorbed in the blood, and that absorbed part would be elimi- nated by the urine. It must be absorbed before it could reach the urine ?—Yes. All these natural processes would come to an end at death ?—Yes. From the fact of antimony having been found in the urine, could you form any inference as to how long before death the antimony must have been administered?—No ; not without referring to some books on physiology. It could be found out by giving certain substances and waiting till they come out in the urine. You could fix a period within which it would happen ?—Yes ; it must have been within eight or ten hours. Soluble bodies entering into the body would come out into the urine within eight or ten hours at the outside. Might it not have been administered before that ?—It must have been, because a good deal was lying in the bowels, and all that we found in the lower bowel might have been adminis- tered days before, and what was in the stomach a few hours before death. Can you draw any inference from what you found as to the time at which it was admin- istered, the size of the doses in which it was administered, and further, can you draw any in- ference as to whether what you found in the body was all that was administered ?—We did not find all that was administered, for we knew very well that diarrhcea would carry off a great portion of it, as we found on a former analysis; antimony being effective upon the liver, making a flow of bile, would act as any other purgative, and it might go into the stomach and out of the bowels within six or eight hours. Then if you find antimony in a man's body and before he dies he suffered from diarrhcea, there is a pro* bability that the antimony found in the body was not all the antimony aministered to him ? —It would not be all the antimony probably? If antimony was found in a man's body and shortly before his death he had been suffering from diarrhcea, then I should presume the anti- mony had caused the diarrhcea. And that the diarrhcea would itself have car- ried off a good deal of it?—Yes. Where antimony has been administered for a period, are there any appearances of the intes- tines that would indicate that it had been so administered ?—Yes. If the dose was a suffi- ciently graded one to be retained for a little time, and yet large enough to act with its full vi'-ulence upon the stomach, there would be- inflammation ; but if there were smaller doses repeated you would have less signs—irritation instead of inflammation. Did you observe any signs on the bowels, or were they too far decomposed ?—They were de- composed pretty much, and as soon as de- composition sets in all redness would disappear; but we had a coating of dirty grey film. What does that mean?—It means that some inflammation occurred—perhaps chronic, per- haps lasting for some time. And in that film we found antimony. Then we had a negative in- dication ; we had no signs of any inflammatory disease, because that would cause either ulcer- ation in the bowels themselves or enlargement of the mesenteric glands. Perhaps you will be good enough, before to- morrow if you can, to look up the subject I was referring to and ascertain, if possible, how long antimony might have been administered ?—Yes. Can you draw any inference as to the doses in which it had been administered? I ask that question because I see that in cases of poisoning by arsenic doctors profess to be able to do so.—■ There are so many modes of rejection that any inference as to quantities is vitiated. The poison we found lying in the mucous of the Toowels was insoluble and unabsorbed, and was not the stuff that actually poisoned him. Tartar emetic is a poison and antimony is a metal, is it not ?—Yes. What you found in the body was metal anti- mony, I suppose ?—No. We found some form of antimony, but not the metal antimony, in the bowels; probably it was sulphide of antimony. The antimony must have been administered during life ?—Yes. Can you say it was administered in the form of tartar emetic ?—No ; that is impossible. It must have been administered in a soluble form?—Yes. If you asked for antimony you would probably get tartar emetic. To Mr Haggitt: Our tests bring it back to the metal antimony. I assisted Dr Black in per-