able value to their friends, to their families, and to the public, should be at the mercy of any profligate rake who wantonly gives affronts or idly fancies he receives them, is a great aggravation of the folly, as well as of the guilt, of duelling. This reflection seems to shew the propriety of a change in the penal code respecting it; and that the punishment inflicted should be confined to the aggressor; strict inquisition into the circumstances of the case being previously made by the coroner, or some magistrate authorized and bound to exercise this important trust. And he may with reason be regarded as the aggressor, who either violates the rules of decorum by any unprovoked rudeness or insult, or who converts into an offence what was intended only as convivial pleasantry.

§ 14. A Physician has no special interest in an acquaintance with the statutes relative to duelling; but, as he possesses the rank of a gentleman, both by his liberal education and profession, the law of honour (if that may be termed a law, which is indefinite and arbitrary,) has a claim to his serious study and attention. As a philosopher also it becomes him to trace its origin, and to investigate the principles on which it is founded; and as a moralist duty calls upon him to counteract its baneful influence and ascendancy: for in princi

See Notes and Illustrations, No. XIV.

ple it is distinct from virtue; and as a practical rule it extends only to certain formalities and decorums, of little importance in the transactions of life, and which are spontaneously observed by those who are actuated with the true sense of propriety and rectitude. Genuine honour in its full extent may be defined, a quick perception and strong feeling of moral obligation, in conjunction with an acute sensibility to shame, reproach, or infamy. In different characters these constituent parts of the principle are found to exist in proportions so diversified, as sometimes to appear almost single and detached. The former always "aids and strengthens virtue :" the latter may occasionally "imitate her actions," when fashion happily countenances, or high example prompts to, rectitude; but, being connected for the most part with a jealous pride and capricious irritability, it will be more shocked with the imputation, than with the commission, of what is wrong; and thus it will constitute that spurious honour, which, by a perversion of the laws of association, "puts evil for good and good for evil," and, under the sanction of a name, perpetrates crimes without remorse and even without ignominyt.

§ 15. Homicide by poison is another very im

s Addison's Cuto, act ii. sc. 5.

t See the Author's Moral and Literary Dissertations, p. 295. (or Works, vol. ii. p. 203.)

portant object of medical jurisprudence. When it is the effect of inadvertency, or the want of adequate caution in the use of substances dangerous to health and life, the law regards it as a misdemeanour; when it is the consequence of rashness, of wanton experiment, or of motives unjust though not malicious", it becomes manslaughter; and when the express purpose is to kill by means of some deleterious drug, it constitutes a most atrocious species of murder. In cases of this nature the Faculty are called upon to give evidence concerning the nature of the poison, the symptoms produced by it, and the actual fatality of its operation. I know not whether the period of this fatal operation be extended, as in the infliction of blows and wounds, to a year and a day; but, if it be, the most nice and accurate investigation of the progressive advances of disease and death will be incumbent on the Physician or Surgeon who is consulted on the occasion. No subject has given rise to more misconception and superstition than the action of poisons. Numberless

u "If an action unlawful itself be done deliberately, and with intention of mischief or great bodily harm to particulars, or of mischief indiscriminately, fall it where it may, and death ensue against or beside the original intention of the party, it will be murder. But if such mischievous intention doth not appear, (which is matter of fact and to be collected from circumstances,) and the act was done heedlessly and incautiously, it will be manslaughter, not accidental death, because the act upon which death ensued was unlawful." (Foster's Crown Law, p. 261.)

substances have been classed as such, which, if not inert, are at least innoxious; and powers have been ascribed to others, far exceeding their real energy. Even Lord Verulam, the great luminary of science, in his Charge against the Earl of Somerset for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in the tower of London, seems to give credit to the story of Livia, who is said to have poisoned the figs upon the tree, which her husband was wont to gather with his own hands; and he seriously states, that Weston chased the poor prisoner "with poison after poison; poison in salts, poison in meats, poison in sweet-meats, poison in medicines and vomits, until at last his body was almost come, by use of poisons, to the state that Mithridates's body was by the use of treacle and preservatives, that the force of the poisons was blunted upon him: Weston confessing, when he was chid for not dispatching him, that he had given him enough to poison twenty men." In this criminal transaction the truth probably was (what has been judiciously suggested by Rapin,) that the lieutenant of the Tower, refusing to be concerned in the crime, yet not daring to discover it from the fear of the Viscount Rochester's resentment, seized the victuals sent

[See Galen, De Antid. i. 1; De Ther. ad Pis. e. 16. tom. xiv. pp. 3, 283.)

- Bacon's Works, vol. iv. p. 481.

from time to time for the prisoner, and threw them into the house of office. Sir Thomas Overbury, however, fell a victim at last to an empoisoned glyster.

When the particular drug, or other mean employed, can be accurately ascertained, its deleterious qualities should be fully investigated; and these should be cautiously compared with the effects ascribed to it in the case under consideration. It may often be expedient also to examine the body of the sufferer by dissection; and this should be accomplished as expeditiously as possible, that the changes imputed to death may not be confounded with those which are imputed to poison. But on such points reference can alone be made to the knowledge and experience of the practitioner, and to the lights which he may acquire by consulting Faselius and other works of a similar nature. I shall, therefore, close this article with a few passages of the charge of Mr. Justice Buller to the grand jury, relative to the trial of Captain Donellan, for the murder of Sir Theodosius Boughton, at the Warwick assizes, in March 1781. "In this case, gentlemen," he says, 66 you will have two objects to consider, first, whether the deceased did die of poison? secondly, whether the person suspected did assist in administering the poison? With respect to the first of these considerations, you will, no doubt, hear the sentiments