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
Catalogue details

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.)

    11/50
    justifies himself in the conclusion that the supposition is unfounded. If cer- tain phenomena are observed, then he refers them to that agent whose pecu- liar mode of action upon the animal economy is known by former experience. Now the whole medical and chemical evidence in the trial of John Hendrick- son, Jr., professes to be based upon former well known and well established experience, and it is for this reason that it was pressed upon the jury by the prosecution as worthy of belief; it is claimed to be consistent with establish- ed laws of the organic and inorganic kingdoms, and as consistent with the laws of the animal economy. It is not in this precise language that this doctrine is expressed, but it is virtually the ground upon which the con- viction rests. It is now my purpose to show your Excellency that what was claimed as good and substantial chemical evidence on the part of the prose- cution has no foundation in truth. That when either of these classes of tes- timony is brought to true and substantial tests it is not agreeable to estab- lished experience, and here the verdict, so far as it depended upon medical and chemical testimony, was wrong and unjustifiable. 1st. The Chemical Testimony. —The chemist, Dr. Salisbury, proceeds in the usual mode. He makes a solution of the suspected substances, and then resorts to the application of tests designed to detect the presence of any and all the destructive agents which are known to be employed to affect life and the integrity of the organs essential to the continuance of life. He finds no evidence of the presence of any destructive agent until he comes to aconite. Here his tests, according to his testimony, proclaim in unmistakable pheno- mena, the presence of aconite, an alkaloid, found in the monkshood. The question now comes up, was Dr. Salisbury justified in his inferences respecting the presence of aconitine ? If Dr. Salisbury is right, the same results as he states to have followed in his hands, and under his treatment, will necessarily follow in the hands of others in the treatment of aconitine in the ways he followed. If such results never follow, then Dr. Salisbury has present foreign bodies which he has overlooked, and which have modified most essentially his results. His tests are sulphuric, muriatic and nitric acid ; with the first he obtains a deep port wine or red color; with the second a light port %oine or red color ; with the third a clear solution. The results of my experiments are as follows : sulphuric acid boiled with tincture of aconite (obtained from the same sample as that supposed to have been sold to a customer who it is alleged might have been John Hendrickson, Jr.,) lost most of its red color and became quite pale ; boiled with pure aconitine the solution remained colorless ; and boiled with nitric acid the solution re- mained colorless. These experiments were repeated with the same results. Dr. Salisbury's results cannot therefore be obtained when we deal with the well-known substance, aconite in tincture. If, however, we add to the tincture of aconite, oil or animal matters, then we obtain the red colors spoken of by Dr. Salisbury; or if we employ these matters by themselves we also obtain various red colors answering to Dr. Salisbury's description. We are therefore justified in the opinion that the tests set forth in his evi- dence, as indicative of the presence of aconite, are untrue; that the results he obtained were, on the contrary, due to the presence of organic matter, and hence entirely unworthy of credence; and what I state here respecting this evidence, is the belief of our best chemists in the Union. Now., no one can see more clearly than your Excellency, that having started wrong, his whole subsequent course of experiments must be wrong also; for all his arrangements are now contrived to separate a given sub-