The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-01-01
Erie Medical Go. Buffalo, my.
hLUNDERs or MOST PRISONERS.
Women and Physicians Use Time
Worn Methods
From the New York Press.

From the New York Press.
According to one of the highest English
authorities on poison and posoners the
use of cyanide of potassium in the Adams
case was only following the fateful rule
governing criminal prisoners.
In these secret MURDERS" this high au-
thority says the great majority of the
prisoners will cling to the old methods and
stake their necks on poison easily detect
ed !"
The prisoners. according to data gather
ed for centuries generally are women or
physicians.
II was not so long ago that Sir James
Crichton Browne, NJ. D., the distinguished
English physician, alarmed the timorous
and awoke resentment on the other side
of the ocean by his frankness in deliver
ing an address on poison and prisoners,
and how the facilities for subtle murder
have been increased with the advance
ment of science.
Despite this, the speaker said in his adj
dress before the Pharmaceutical Society
of Great Britain, the poisoners of to-day
use practically the same clumsy methods
of getting rid of enemies or membranes
as they employed in the oden days before
science had offered facilities for the
assassins to do their work with slight
chance of being detected.
Women and medical men," said the lee
turer ARE the classes which have sup
Piled the most numerous and notorious
prisoners. Where they do not employ
arsenic they administer some other poison
which can be detected almost as certainly.
"One would have thought that medical
men. with their knowledge of drugs and
command over them, would have been
able to ring the changes I'm an infinite
variety of ways and employ alkaloidal
and other organic poison in such a man.
ner and in such combination as to perplex
the clinical observer. battle the pathology
lists and set at naught the skill of the
analyst.
but not so. With what might almost
be called infatuaton they have almost in
variably worked in the old grooves and
carefully prepared a net to snare them
selves. For the greater part they have
trusted to the inorganic poisons. These,
owing to their unalterable character, ease
of detection and defniteness of reaction,
can be identified in the body with mathe-
NAUTICAL certainty. And when an alkaloid
has been essayed il has been strychnia,
which of all the alkalods approaches
most closely to the inorganic poisons, and
TO which, too, very conclusive physiology
cal tests can be applied.
"The rarer and more fugacious alkaloids,
which / am not even going to name, and
which, when detected it would be impos-
SlDlS " dlllILils might ilOi N putlNlbClANe
products-ptomaines albumnoses and pep
tones which result from the decomposi-
ton of the tissues or of indigested food,
have so far as we know, never been tried.
Even nicotine the most widely diffused
of alkaloids-with which, / suppose, a
third of the population is always poisoned
more or less-has not been resorted to with
premeditated malice except in one case.
That was the case of Count Bocarne. who
Wit in GXta mir hfo fo'e
brother. Fougnies although in the body of
a murdered smoker it might well pass as
a relic of the pipe or cigarette"
An English coroner bitterly took Sir
James Browne to task for publicly telling
of these secret polsons, of the existence of
which a large majority of the population
is in ignorance The coroner said the dis
tinguished physician had virtually put
into the murderers hands many new Sc
cret and terrible means of death. Learn
ing of thise kind, he said, was a danger
Gus thing.
The physicians reply was that every
Dbysicain knew of the existence of these
poisons, and the layman should be in
formed
besides" he said, "the recent multi
pication Of organic posons, which may be
used with absolute impuuity as regards
detection, should not lead us to expect a
like multiplication in the cases of criminal
poisoning Whatever the remote future
may bring forth. il is certain that for a
long time to come the great majority of
prisoners viii cling 20 the old methods,
and stake their necks on poisons easily
detected.
For one archaeological Mephstopheles
who can possess himself of a microbe
poison and use it dexterously, there will
be at least a dozen despicable wretches
who win take what comes to hand most
readily in common life, and blunder with
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