A report on the trial and acquital of Mary Hunter, for the alleged murder of her husband by arsenic : with arguments in proof of her innocence, and strictures upon some parts of the medical jurisprudence of this country / by P. H. Holland, surgeon.

  • Holland, P. H. (Philip H.)
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report on the trial and acquital of Mary Hunter, for the alleged murder of her husband by arsenic : with arguments in proof of her innocence, and strictures upon some parts of the medical jurisprudence of this country / by P. H. Holland, surgeon. 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.

    44/44 (page 44)
    experiments is almost exclusively due, will, himself publish the details. We varied errors of weighing or of measuring. We purchased the white arsenic from Mr. Davies, (some of the same from which he supplied Mary Hunter.) tested it and ascertained its purity. We then boiled 100 grains wrapped up in a piece of linen in a pint of pure water for half an hour, filling up as it evaporated; it lost 83.6'grains in weight, or 9.57 dissolved in 1000 of water. We next boiled some for various periods, and filtered off the solutions while hot, into a 1000 grain bottle, which when cooled down to 60D, weighed (the mean of three experiments) 1009.54 grains; 1.44 grains was deposited on cooling, and 8.1 remained in solution. To satisfy ourselves that this in solution was, all of it, white arsenic, we precipitated it with sulphuretted hydrogen, and procured 9.3 grains of sulphuret, the equivalent of 8.1 grains of arsenious acid. Lest this par- ticular specimen of white arsenic might happen to be unusually insoluble, we boiled a quantity in water with caustic potass, added acetic acid in excess, cooled down to 00, and filtered the solution. We obtained from 1000 grains of this by measure, 9.4 grains of sulphuret. A hundred grains of white arsenic, wrapped up in a piece of linen, were boiled in half a pint of milk for half an hour, one third of a pint was left and twelve grains of arsenic dissolved. Most of it, however, appeared to have united with the curd of the milk, and fixed itself firmly to the bottom of the pan; I believe a very small part was, properly speaking, in solution, but we have not yet ascertained the precise quantity. > [Perhaps I may be permitted to mention, as creditable to my native town, that all the legal gentlemen connected with this case, so ably conducted on both sides, were lately, and, with the exception of Mr. Wilkins, are still residents in Man- chester.] the process, so as, I think, to avoid every source of fallacy, and repeated the experiments, so that by taking the mean of several results, we might neutralize Printod at J. GiLLETr s, (Into Simpson and Gillbtt’s,) Steam Tress, Manchester.