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For some time the physician gazed in deep thought at the pale face of the unconscious slumberer. Suddenly turning to the Nubian, he said to him: "Ali, where does your master keep the drugs he has been for years accustomed to take?" The Nubian stared in mute amazement, but moved not from his rug. "Ali," said Dr. Orfila, sternly, "unless I see and know those drugs, this night your master dies."
M. Orfila, sure about the grocer of the Rue de la Paix, was defeated by M. Barruel. M. Orfila, sure about the death of Charles Lafarge, is declared by to-day's experts in criminal jurisprudence and pathology to have been talking through his hat. According to the present experts, says ``Philip Curtin, Lafarge was not poisoned at all, but died a natural death.
In its action on the animal system it is one of the most virulent poisons known. It exists in varying, though small proportion, in all species of tobacco. Those called mild, and most esteemed, seem to contain the least. Thus, according to Orfila, Havana tobacco yields two per cent of the alkaloid, and Virginia nearly seven per cent.
It amounted to only three-hundredths of a grain in a half pint of the soup as sent to table. Now, Christison says that quantities of 18 to 44 grains of the very soluble chloride of tin were required to kill dogs in from one to four days. Orfila says that several persons on one occasion dressed their dinner with chloride of tin, mistaking it for salt.
Versmann found 14.1 grms. of dried liver to contain 0.009 grm. chloride of silver, or 0.047 per cent. of metallic silver. In the kidneys he found 0.007 grm. chloride of silver, or 0.061 per cent. of metallic silver; this was in a case of chronic poisoning, the percentage will be seen to be very small. Orfila Jun. found silver in the liver five months after the poisoning.
The youth you remember as if it were yesterday, the lounger at evening parties, or the chaperon of riding damsels to the Phœnix, comes forth now a man of deep and consummate acquirement he whose chemistry went no further than the composition of a “tumbler of punch,” can now perform the most difficult experiments of Orfila or Davy, or explain the causes of failure in a test that has puzzled the scientific world for half a century.
Four years previous to the case of the Veuve Lacoste that same Orfila came into the trial of Mme Lafarge with the first use in medical jurisprudence of the Marsh test, and based on the experiment a cocksure opinion which had much to do with the condemnation of that unfortunate woman.
Should you wander with a critical doctor through those ghostly wards, you would see some queerer results of battle and fray than ever the doctors observe nowadays, cases I should like to report, it might be: poisonings that would have bewildered Orfila, heart-diseases that would have astounded Corvisart, and those wonderful instances of consumption which render that most painful of diseases so delightful to die of in novels.
M. Lecoq did not share in his friend's indignation; he was not sorry at the prospect of a bitter struggle in court, and he imagined a great scientific duel, like that between Orfila and Raspail, the provincial and Parisian chemists. "If Tremorel has the face to deny his part in Sauvresy's murder," said he, "we shall have a superb trial of it."
He issued an exhumation order, and on the 31st of July an autopsy on the body of Boursier was carried out by MM. Orfila and Gardy, doctors and professors of the Paris faculty of medicine.
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