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"Very interesting reading it might be made, too," remarked Sherlock Holmes, sticking a small piece of plaster over the prick on his finger. "I have to be careful," he continued, turning to me with a smile, "for I dabble with poisons a good deal." He held out his hand as he spoke, and I noticed that it was all mottled over with similar pieces of plaster, and discoloured with strong acids.
There is a demand for these poisons; the brewer and distiller supply the demand and gain thereby large profits; society beholds the profits and adores the brewer.
"One never can tell where or when a blow will fall with these people," he explained. "You see, I've lived among them. They are a hot-blooded race. Besides, as you perhaps have read, they have some queer poisons down in South America. I mean to run no unnecessary chances." "I suppose you suspected all along that the dagger had something to do with the Gold of the Gods, did you not?" I hinted.
He broke off a piece, and the fresh surface was a creamy white, that changed like magic in the space of ten seconds to a yellowish-green colour. It was even an inviting-looking change. He broke off two other pieces to see it repeated. They were wonderful things these fungi, thought Mr. Coombes, and all of them the deadliest poisons, as his father had often told him. Deadly poisons!
This is owing, in part, to the fact that this blood, being full of substances freshly taken or made from the food, is very likely to contain poisons; indeed, as a matter of fact, blood taken from these veins on its way to the liver, and injected directly into the blood vessels of an animal, acts like a mild poison.
The latter gift, that power of the "subtle-souled psychologist," as Shelley calls him, seems to have been connected with some tendency to disease in the physical temperament, something of a morbid want of balance in those parts where the physical and intellectual elements mix most closely together, with a kind of languid visionariness, deep-seated in the very constitution of the "narcotist," who had quite a gift for "plucking the poisons of self-harm," and which the actual habit of taking opium, accidentally acquired, did but reinforce.
Though Nature has perhaps an antidote for all her poisons many of them continue to defy approach. They lie concealed, leaving the astutest to grope in the dark. That which is true of material things is truer yet of spiritual things. The ideal about which we hear so much, is as unattained as the fabled bag of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The medical history of the British army in India teaches the same lesson." But why present farther testimony? Is not the evidence complete? To the man who values good health; who would not lay the foundation for disease and suffering in his later years, we need not offer a single additional argument in favor of entire abstinence from alcoholic drinks. He will eschew them as poisons.
Let us be as merciful to them as we can; but for God's sake take them away from here quickly; their very presence poisons me. Barradas, come here . . . give me your hand. You have stood to me manfully. Now I must go on deck and see to Warner."
They told about laboratories in which Queen Catherine prepared her poisons; of a pavilion in which there was a martyr's chamber; of subterranean cells for those who had been buried alive; and all these dreadful stories made such an impression that no one dared approach this place of horrors after sunset.
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