body." * And with these excruciating pains,
when finally exhausted, he dies.
* Medical Jurisprudence, by A.S.Taylor, F.U.S., Chap. x.
Third Edition. Churchill, 1849.

We do not forget that arsenic, like other virulent
poisons, is a valuable medicine, if properly
administered by the hands of the scientific
practitioner; so true it is, that medicines
differ from poisons, only in their doses and
application. But we must at the same time
repeat our conviction, that a due enforcement
of legal regulations should be exercised as to
their sale. We say "enforcement" advisedly,
because there are some very judicious regulations
on the subject—which nobody attends to.
We may add, that few know them. The Sale
of Arsenic Bill was passed in the last Session
of Parliament, and it provides that no arsenic
shall be sold, unless in the presence of a
witness; that all sales shall be entered in a book,
to be signed by the person buying it, and that
no sale of poison shall be made to a person
unknown. The Act further provides that no
arsenic shall be sold without being mixed with
soot or indigo, and the penalty for a violation
of these enactments is twenty pounds. Such are
the careful provisions of the Act. To what end
were they made? Merely to pacify some
troublesome member; but with no notion of
being carried out as a thing "in earnest?"
Was it only one of the very numerous
instances of a game at play in legislating?
Who ever saw black or sooty arsenic? Who
ever saw blue arsenic? As it is prohibited
by law for any one to sell gunpowder after
dark, so we would prohibit any one from
selling poison "in the dark." The purchaser
should be well known as one who can be
found, if wanted; and the other provisions
of the Act should be rendered efficient, and
in earnest, instead of being left comparatively
unknown, and no more regarded than
if they did not exist.

The whole gist of this ignorance and
carelessness is finely displayed in the recent case
of Rollinson. On the 27th ult,, William
Rollinson, a man at the advanced age of eighty
years, was examined at the Petty Sessions in
Clare, on the twofold charge of murdering
Ann Cowell, a married woman, by administering
arsenic, and of attempting to murder
his daughter-in-law, Mary Rollinson, by the
same means. The latter, who escaped,
appears to have been the only intended victim
—(we have previously noticed the indifference
poisoners often exhibit as to "killing their
way" to the intended victim); and the
apparent motive for destroying her life was
the desire to possess himself of some property
bequeathed to her by his son. She was on
the eve of marrying a labourer, named Jarman,
whose wife she now is; and the old man
objected to the marriage, and quarrelled with
her, on her refusing either to give it up, or to
make over the goods to him. His attempts
to poison her are supposed to have commenced
so long ago as the 17th of August. She fell
ill suddenly and unaccountably on the day
last named, but recovered to some extent, and
a week afterwards partook of a black currant
pudding, of her own making, when she again
became sick, and showed other symptoms of
having taken poison. The day following, her
niece and two or three children ate some of
the pudding, and were seized with vomiting
and violent burning in the throat; but they
all recovered, and no suspicion was excited.
Mary Rollinson continued to live with the
accused, but was hardly ever free from illness;
and towards the end of the same month she
requested her sister, Ann Cowell, to come and
attend her while on her sick-bed. The sister
did so; and having taken some broth,
prepared by Mary Rollinson for herself, she
immediately became seriously ill, and was
conveyed home, where she died in a few
hours. The suddenness of her death caused
a coroner's inquest to be held, and a post-
mortem examination of the body was made by
a surgeon of the neighbourhood, who gave it
as his opinion that she had died of English
cholera. The verdict of the jury was in
accordance with this opinion, and so the
newly-raised suspicions were dispelled. On
the 2nd of October, however, they were powerfully
revived. Mary Rollinson had made
four dumplings of her own flour, of which she
herself, Charlotte Sparks (one of a family
residing in the same house), and two children
partook. All of them soon exhibited signs of
illness, and a cat and dog, to whom one of the
dumplings had been thrown, became violently
sick also. The same surgeon was called in,
and, distrusting his own chemical skill on this
second instance, which had so bad an appearance,
he sent a portion of the dumpling
thrown to the dog and cat, and part of the
flour of which it had been made, to a chemist
at Cambridge, who detected the presence of
arsenic in both. The police then ascertained
that the old man had been in the habit of
purchasing arsenic in "ha'porths" and "pen'orths,"
at a druggist's shop in Great Thurlow.
This important fact was proved by an aged
and respectable-looking man, named White,
who described himself as an assistant and
kind of manager at the shop. His answers to
the examining magistrate set the whole
question of the ignorance of the late Sale of
Arsenic Bill, or the contempt of it, in a very
prominent light. Mr. Bevan, the magistrate—
"When you sold him this ounce of arsenic
(on the 21st or 22nd of August), did he state
what he wanted it for?" Witness (somewhat
coolly— "No, really, I don't recollect; but it
must have been something about the rats and
mice." (Taking it for granted that the common
rule-of-thurnb answer was made; but it
did not much matter!) Mr. Bevan—"Then
you have not the slightest recollection about
what he said, excepting that he must have
talked of rats and mice?" Witness—"No, I
don't recollect what he said; it is very likely
it was about some mice; but I sold it him so