Arkansas true Democrat., 1859-05-11
Poisoning.

The frequent cases of poisoning at the north have alarmed the journalists there and they are calling for stringent laws, to arrest the progress of that horrible crime Wives poison husbands and husbands wives-ser- wants, (we beg pardon) hel ps, for some fancied affront, poison whole families and "a spider in the dumpling' is of frequent occurrence. To this meanest and most dastardly of all methods of murder, the best check is to make 1t generally known that detection is certain. Apart from the symp- toms of poisoning, chemists are able to de- tect the smallest quantities in the body of a person. Where there is reason to sus- pect foul play, if poison was used, the fact can be established long after the person is dead In the Stephens case in New York, the body was exhumed after being buried year and the arsenic detected.
 Towards the close of the seventeenth cen tury, in Europe poisoning became the fash ion. In Italy, Tophania, or Tofana, wo- man was executed at seventy years of age confessed that she had been accessary to the poisoning of six hundred persons The practice was chiefly among the higher clas- ses, as they are enormously y called. lnves- tigation led to the startling knowledge that the number of victims could be counted by thousands Fathers whose estates spend thrift sons desired to secure; elder brothers who stood in the way of succession to an estate: husbands whose wives wished to get rid of them. or wives who had become tire some to their husbands rivals; in fact, all whose interest or passion prompted them to dispose of, were poisoned. Sometimes, for the slightest cause, pique or jealousy, a fancied slight or cold look, the victim suf- fered. There seemed to be an intatuation about it, for if successful in one instance, the murder or murderess kept adding to the list of victims. The Marchioness of Brinvillers, thus murdered her father, moth CT and two brothers, and confessed to other murders which she committed to see the effect of the poison. Some of the most distinguished females in England, Spain, France and Italy, were executed and stop finally put to the practice.
 But the immunity that existed then does not now exist Then, it was difficult to detect the poison. The tests now used were unknown Fortunately, many of the most deadly poisons now used are so bitter that they may be detected by their taste, and those which are tasteless, or com paritively so, with few exceptions, do not operate so quickly as to prevent the admin istration of autidotes.
 Murder by poisoning, though apparently a secret method, is as liable as any other to detection. The presence of poison is as easily detected as the bullet hole or wound from the kinfe, and the hand that gave it IS more surely traced. Such things are al- most unknown in the south, being entirely repugnant to the character of the people. It is in the north, where they are eternally canting about their superior morality, their higher state of cultivation that such things are so frequent. An account of an affray, when man to man they meet and fight, as is often the case in the south, is copied and commented upon by our brethren at the north, and cited as proof of our want oi refinement, and one of the results of negro slavery. But the acts of violence in the white labor States are more frequent, and on top of this they have their poisonings assassinations and murders for money.