Gentlemen, let me ask you in what position we are placed for the safety of our lives and families if, upon such evidence as this, upon suspicions so excited and so sanctioned by hasty opinions of medical men, we are liable every time a sudden death takes place in a family to be put upon our trials on suspicion of foul play to those with whom we live? In the cases which are usually discussed in this Court, witnesses are called to give evidence respecting processes and means of arriving at truth with a knowledge of the facts in question, with the operation of which processes the prosecuting counsel, the judge, and the jurors are as well acquainted as the witnesses themselves. The witnesses come to speak to facts, a great portion of which are within the ordinary knowledge and appreciation of mankind; but if science is admitted to dogmatise in our Courts--science not exact in its nature--science not successful, but baffled even by its own tests--science bearing upon its forehead the motto that “a little learning is a dangerous thing”--if that is to be introduced to state processes of arriving at truth, conclusive to its satisfaction, but which we cannot follow, and opinions respecting the cause of death which those processes have not discovered, judges and jurors will have an amount of responsibility thrown upon them too great for human nature to bear. This gentleman, Dr. Taylor, if he had found the poison by his own tests, after long experience of their efficacy, would have been a very good witness to have proved unquestionably that strychnia was there; but not having found it, not having seen the patient, and knowing nothing about him but what Elizabeth Mills told him, and what he heard from Mr. Jones, who did not agree with him, or who gave no evidence agreeing with him--with no better means of information than that he thinks himself justified, upon his oath in a public Court, to say that the pills administered by the medical man (of course, he did not mean to impute any misconduct to Mr. Bamford) contained strychnia, that murder was committed, and Cook poisoned by it. If he is allowed to say that, what family and what medical practitioner is safe? Gentlemen, I beg to ask you on what ground does he say that? Not on any peculiar knowledge, for he has not any knowledge as to the effects of strychnia more than any of us--myself, if you please; for when we come thoroughly to look into it he does not appear, of his own knowledge, to have seen a single case of strychnia in the human subject; and yet he has been daring enough, knowing that the consequences would be disastrous to this man--knowing perfectly well that all the world, or, at all events, the great majority of the world, would take for granted that a medical man in his position would not give a hasty opinion--he has the incredible courage to declare, on his oath, that the pills that were given, as far as he knew, by Dr. Bamford, contained strychnia, and that Cook was poisoned by them!