Review, opinions, &c., of Dr. Charles A. Lee and others : of the testimony of Drs. Salisbury and Swinburne, on the trial of John Hendrickson, Jr., for the murder of his wife, by poisoning.

  • Hendrickson, John, 1832-1854.
Date:
1855
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Review, opinions, &c., of Dr. Charles A. Lee and others : of the testimony of Drs. Salisbury and Swinburne, on the trial of John Hendrickson, Jr., for the murder of his wife, by poisoning. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    have rendered them benefactors of society. I have had official and personal opportunities of testing his accuracy as a chemist and his worth as a man, and I commend him to your best regard. With great respect, truly yours, N. BOWDITCH BLUNT. His Excellency,* H. Seymour. To His Excellency, Horatio Seymour, Governor of the State of New-York: Sir—I would beg leave respectfully to say to you, that from twenty-five years' experience as an Analytical chemist, and from experiments on aconite and aconitine, I am compelled to say that there is no evidence that aconite, or any of its compounds, were present in the parts of Maria Hendrickson analysed and experimented upon by Dr. Salisbury, and testified to by him, and reported by Barnes & Hevenor. To my mind the tests, taste, and ex- periments on animals under the circumstances, and in the way they were made, are not evidence of the presence of that substance. From a long experience in the analysis of parts of the bodies of persons supposed to be poisoned, I must say that I cannot place any reliance on mere morbid appearance either in man or animals. Yours with respect, LAWRENCE REID, 78 West 27th-street, New-York. April 21, 1854. To His Excellency, Horatio Seymour, Governor of the State of New-York: Sir :—Impelled by a duty which I owe to a fellow being, now under the sentence of death for the alleged crime of murder, I am about to submit to your Excellency a statement of my opinion respecting the medical and chem- ical testimony which was given to the court and jury upon the trial. I al- lude to the case of John Hendrickson, Jr. And were my convictions of the truth of my statements less strong than they are, I should even now be silent. Sir, no one than yourself better knows, that the organic and inorganic kingdoms are governed by law, and that for this reason we are competent judges of results, or effects, for these are true to themselves in all similar conditions, and to verify conclusions arrived at by others, we have only to imitate exactly the process and means which they point of; or we may dis- prove this statement by a resort to the proper method. Chemistry is pre- eminent for its exact methods and exact results, and no chemist now-a-daya can put forth results, or statements of results, the truth of which may not be disproved or sanctioned by the whole body of this class of savans. The same great truths hold good in medical science, though we cannot always control the conditions which are necessary to secure those constant results as in chemistry ; still, the agents which act upon the animal economy are also true to themselves ; uniform in a great degree in the production of given phenomena. Opium, arsenic, prussic acid and aconite destroy life in their own peculiar modes, and leave upon the organs upon which they have exerted their peculiar forces their own peculiar marks and effects, and so uniform and constant are these effects upon the animal system, that they are regarded as laws of action. So, when the pathologist sets about an examination of a dead body, the life of which it is supposed has been destroyed by any of these agents, he expects to find certain phenomena, and if not found, he