Note 184 — GENERAL REMARKS ON THE MEDICAL EVIDENCE REQUIRED TO SUBSTANTIATE AN ACCUSATION OF POISONING.

Adams’s Observations on Morbid Poisons, edit. 2, p. 30, where he says “but for this purpose, Mr. Hunter saw that the animal must be in health immediately before death, otherwise neither the quantity nor quality of the secretion would be equal to the purpose; he was confirmed in this by the instances in which he saw the stomach digested; both were men who had died from a violent death; both had been previously in sufficient health to eat a hearty meal. The fair inference from these was, that when men die of disease, the appetite usually ceases, and probably the secretion of the gastric juice also.”