Note 138 — Chapter VII

“A curious toxicological case is reported from Hamburg. The body of a man who died in 1867 was taken for examination. It was thought necessary to determine arsenic, not merely in the corpse in question, but in the soil of the churchyard at different distances from the coffin, and also in the body of another man who had been subsequently buried in the same grave. This latter body was perfectly free from arsenic, which, however, was found in the first corpse in ample fatal quantity (3·6 grains), whilst in the lid of the coffin and in the adjacent ground very minute quantities were traced. Hence the conclusion was fairly drawn that the man in question had been poisoned with arsenic, and that a portion of the poison had been gradually transferred from his body to the wood of the coffin and the adjacent soil.”—Chemiker Zeitung, No. 7, February 13th, 1879.