Observations on the medical evidence in the case of the Queen v. Smethurst / by T.G. Geoghegan.

  • Geoghegan, Thomas Grace, 1807-1869.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the medical evidence in the case of the Queen v. Smethurst / by T.G. Geoghegan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    turbance, characterized by persistent and urgent bilious vomiting, attended by diarrhoea, which after a while as- sumed a dysenteric character. The vomiting recurred with violence on each administration of food or medicine by the prisoner, whilst that given by another was retained. The taste of the food was occasionally complained of. Burning of the mouth and throat was also noted, and apparently some signs of salivation. None of the measures adopted by the physicians in attendance produced the slightest benefit. The patient finally sank exhausted. On dissection, the organs within the head and chest were found healthy. The mucous coat of the stomach betrayed, at the cardiac end, a large patch of black extravasation. The upper part of the small intestines presented nothing remarkable. The contents were bilious. The mucous membrane of the last three feet of this bowel was coated with a firmly adherent layer of granular lymph. That of the great intestine was beset from end to end with ulcers, mostly of the size of a sixpence, some of the edges of which were sharp, as if punched out, elsewhere loose and sloughing, the whole of an active and recent kind. In the caecum the inflammation was of the most acute and violent nature ; the lining membrane was not only superficially ulcerated throughout, but large portions of it mortified. The muscular coat was in part laid bare, and both it and the submucous tissue around were infiltrated with sero-purulent fluid. Blackish blood was spread in a thin coagulum over the mucous sur- face throughout the whole of the great intestine, but more especially in the caecum. The accomplished pathologist who conducted this part of the investigation, assigns valid reasons for believing, that the above condition of the great intestine could not have been of more than two or three weeks' standing. The chemical inquiries established the presence of arsenic in one of two of the evacuations passed about three days before death, and of antimony in the contents of the small