The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-13 00:00:00

DISEASE.

The dysenteric diarrhoea and evacuation of blood.

The eiistenco of ulcers in the large intestine.
To explain the excessive vomiting, the defence
suggested that it was caused by early pregnancy.
The advocates of this hypothesis forget that a major
irritation, with scarcely an exception, controls a
minor, even although in a different organ ; and in
such a case as this there cannot be a doubt that th.
excessive intestinal irritation would have kept in
abeyance that from the uterine condition, had it
existed. , ISTor, I may add, is it likely that men of
large experience would overlook an irritation of
that kind.
It is true that a case apparently to a certain ex-
tent in point was adduced by one of the witnesses
for the defence. This case was so imperfectly re-
ported that I could draw no conclusion from it, and
most certainly I should have fears of " foul play,"
or " mala praxis," if T met with such a combination
as uncontrollable sickness, excessive diarrhoea, and
pregnancy.
I have thus endeavoured fairly to analyse_this
very serious case, and after the most careful con-
sideratiett I find myself unable to arrive at any
other conclusion than that Isabella Bankes died
from the frequent administration of antimony and
bichloride of mercury, with occasional doses of
arsenic. Had iodide of potassium or iodine in any
other form been occasionally added, the effects of
the other poisons would have been enhanced.
I trust this very important case will not be lost
upon toxicologists, and that it will lead to new and
careful observations upon the effects of poisons in
combination, upon their mode of eliinination, upon
the means which may be used to prevent the accu-
mulation of them in the tissues and organs of the
body, and, finally, that it will induce analytical
chemists to review carefully all the processes
hitherto in use for the purpose of detecting mineral
and other poisons with a view to clear up every
possible source of fallacy.
The interests of science and the good of man-
kind (the constant aim of the best cultivators of
science) demand all this. ,
I need scarcely add, that it will be infinitely
more agreeable to n to learn that all my argu-
ments are fallacious, and that the innocence of the
prisoner has been proved, than that another life
should be sacrificed.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
R. B. TODD.
VeVay, Switzerland, Sept. 5.

TEE '►VAR IN CHINA AND THE GREAT

EASTERN.

(From the Ttnmes.)
The most conspicuous troubles of life are no,
utter failures, but such accidents as ladies call
" provoking," because just enough to disappoint a
too sanguine expectation. We have no desire to
depreciate what we deeply lament, but just of this
sort are the two disasters that gave so sad a shade
to our yesterday's columns. Was it in reason that
by throwing a few rockets into a provincial city,
and extorting a bit of paper from a barbarian, we
should be able to walk all over China ? Was it in
reason that the grandest achievement of human en-
terprise should start on its first voyage without a
misap ? No one can doubt that we shall soon be as
much at home and as safe at Pekin as at Paris ;
as
little can it be doubted that the Great Eastern will
soon be plying across the ocean as regularly as the
packets between Folkestone and Boulogne. That
an unexpected resistance has driven back an
escort, or that a people whose only skill is trea-
chery should have succeeded in an ambuscade, only
recalls a thousand similar incidents that had no
effect whatever on the result. It is like,the travel-
ler's mishap, which loses him a train, frets him for
a day, is forgotten in a week, and does not retard
by one minute the termination of his journey. If
we look to the end, what has happened in the Great
Eastern is, in proportion, a still smaller affair. As
our correspondent justly remarks, it is only as if a
drunken pilot had run the ship ashore. A parti-
cular invention, which if it succeeds will economise
heat and ilrevent it from incommoding pas-
sengers, has failed. It has failed, we arc told, and
been given up often before. So the question lay
between enterprise and caution, and, as often hap-
pens, the builders of the Great Eastern ventured to
try the experiment with their paddle-wheel fun-
nels, in spite of the protest of their enginemaker,
but took the safer course with those of the screw.
The warning of the enginemaker was not ground-
less, and should have been followed with all five
funnels. But from first to last the progress of
steam has been a succession of experiments, often
very, disastrous, and sometimes fatal to inventors.
Of course there is something_to blame, and.

we do dwell an instant on the fault, it is simply
because everybody will anticipate us. The stake
was too great for the introduction of such a risk
as this appears' to have been. Experiments are
proverbially made upon trifles; and even the
Collins Company and others had thought their
ships too valuable for this experiment. It is like
trying an Armstrong gun at short range, n A
against a sandbank, or a bit of masonry, or an
iron shield, but at once against a magazine, and
so jumping to the most terrible conclusion. The
experiment was here tried, not only on the
grandest scale, but in the very place where a
failure would be most disastrous,—in the funnel
passing through the gorgeous ladies' saloon. Every
one must have admired the rather oppressive
magnificence of that apartment, where all that
was not glass was the most gorgeous decoration.
Every one, too, must have lamented the apparent
necessity for breaking the area of the apartment
with a large solid mass in the middle. True, it was
so disguised by mirrors that one 'could not tell
where the room ended. one, however, but the
most initiated visitors could have imagined that in
the centre of the room thus glassed and garlanded
was an infernal machine. An inch or two behind
these glasses was a huge steam boiler constructed
on the most dangerous principles. You might as
well be smoking a cigar in a powder magazine.
The reflection you saw there had a spectral import.
It was like the hideous jest of the pistol gallery at
a French fete, where if you hit the button the showy
dame turns into a skeleton. It was an oversight we
have been told, in the original plan of the ship that
the funnels were not placed in the bulkheads, so as
not to interfere with the open spaces. If it was
necessary to place them where they were, there
would arise an evident necessity for surrounding
the funnel with every possible non-conductor. The
invention described seems specious enough, though
it is evident that when all depended on precisely
the same quantity of water being admitted at one
end of the apparatus as was let out at the other,the
calculation ought to be very nice indeed. At one
end the water would have to be admitted cold from
an open reservoir ; at the other it would have to be
forced into a boiler at high pressure. The danger
consisted in the difficulty of making the two opera-
tions keep exact time. Of course, both could be
regulated, and no doubt there were regulators.
Was the contrivance imperfect, or did the man at
the post neglect his duty P Pilots have slept before
now, but this man's post was more critical even
than a pilot's, for he had the safety of the whole
ship in his hands,without check or correction.
There is just a look of the same error of judg-
ment, the same risky experimenting, the same
trusting to appearances in that other disaster, so