XVI. Death by Poisons. «The leperous distilment, whose effect SHAKSPEARE. A CHEMICAL process incorporates the fruits of the earth, or the flesh of other animals, with our own, through digestion and assimilation. Another chemical process, when other vegetable or animal substances are introduced, dissolves and destroys the whole system. Like the electric fire, the very touch of prussic acid darts through the human frame one withering flash; and life has departed for ever. The slower and more painful operation of arsenic disturbs and distresses the vital functions, till they cease. Strong narcotics, like laudanum, oppress the brain; and the soul passes away under the thick cloud which envelops the senses and all the intellectual faculties. Conveyed to the blood, also, from without, many substances diffuse a blasting energy, which is mightier than all the resistance of physical life. These poisons have been employed by the murderer, by the savage warrior, by the public executioner, and by the suicide. But they may also, through various accidents, find entrance within the body, and accom plish there their terrible work of dissolution. The Emperor John Comnenus was mortally wounded while he was hunting, by a poisoned arrow. A fatal quantity of some powerful drug, of which a little might preserve life, but much must destroy it, has sometimes been administered through the error of a nurse or attendant; and sometimes, that of the apothecary, the friend or the patient himself has substituted a poison for a remedy. Archbishop Stuart, son of the celebrated Earl of Bute, died from swallowing an embrocation which had been given him by mistake for a medicine. The beautiful poetess best known under her maiden name of Landon, appears to have heedlessly used a greater quantity of prussic acid than was her perilous custom, and was found dead, alone, in her chamber, at Cape Coast Castle. An apothecary in one of the Southern States, on the representation that he had perhaps sent a draught which he did not intend, was so confident of his correctness that he offered to swallow the draught, and actually destroyed himself by his rashness. It is common to hear of those who, having mistaken the poisonous toadstool for the rich mushroom, have brought death into a family at a repast. Children and domestics have lighted upon arsenic which had been carelessly deposited within their reach, and have tasted it fatally, or, perhaps, mingled it accidentally with the food of a household. Diseases in the flesh of animals have been known to cause qualities so poisonous, that those who partook of the flesh, after the animal was slain, have sickened and died. It has sometimes happened, that very slight wounds have spread, in an inexplicable manner, some strange effect, like that of venom, throughout the system. There is a special peril in the dissection of dead bodies, around which floats so destructive an atmosphere. Some valuable lives of professional men have been lost, through the injury inflicted by a mere puncture with some instrument which had just been used in such anatomical investigations. In the bite of a mad dog, the mischief proceeds not from any natural fury of the animal, but only from an accidental malady, and is not in proportion to the severity of the wound, but only to the malignity of the substance infused. It may properly be placed, therefore, not with other fatal injuries from beasts, but with fortuitous deaths from the communication of poisonous matter. Amongst the victims of hydrophobia the most distinguished, perhaps, was Charles, Duke of Richmond, who died in 1819, while he was Governor of Canada, having been bitten by a favourite dog which was often near his person. The blood, the nerves, the digestive organs, thus take up the seeds of death from a variety of substances; and man, with all his skill, cannot deliver his inmost frame from such enemies. They enter deeper into the secrets of nature than all his remedies or his knowledge. How amazing is that agency, and how far beyond all human discernment, through which one single drop received into the throat, a few grains deposited in the stomach, or a touch, and no more, reaching the blood-vessels, can prostrate the strongest form, defy all power of science, derange and absolutely dissolve the whole organization, drive the soul from its citadel, and rapidly convert the lifeless body into a mass of corruption! Nothing more clearly tells how fearfully and wonderfully we are made, and how manifold as well as mighty, are the means which obey the divine decrees, of judg ment or of mercy. The men who die by these poisons, except when they are administered by the hand of suicide or of murder, are very few; only enough to remind the rest that all nature can become the armoury of death. XVII. Death from Atmospheric "On every nerve The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense; THOMSON. Two dreadful extremes, the heat that consumes, and the cold that congeals, threaten on either side the life of man, which commonly vibrates between them, at a secure distance. From the violence of the burning sun he shelters himself beneath the shade of roofs, trees, or rocks; and against the biting blasts he protects himself with the aid of fire, thick raiment, and continual exercise. But sometimes he is found unprepared, or is drawn forth from his refuge, and falls under the might of a natural force, which he was not framed to encounter. The air, too, which he breathes, may, through the accumulation of noxious vapours in close pits and depths, be so deprived of the just proportion of its vital elements, that to inhale it is to be suffocated. Exposed without defence to the vehement heat of the sun, especially in the warmer latitudes, men have often dropped down, and survived but a few moments. A regiment of Prussians, in 1848, suffered as great a loss in this manner as would have been caused by a |