Mr. Edward Davies, the analyst, was called, and gave evidence to the effect that he had found _no weighable arsenic_ in the portions of the body selected at the post-mortem, but that he had subsequently _found one fiftieth of a grain of arsenic_ in a part of the liver, nothing in the _stomach or its contents, but traces, not weighable_, in the intestines, and that he had found arsenic in some of the bottles and things found in the house after death and in the Valentine’s meat juice.
The first issue which the jury at the trial had to determine was whether it was proved beyond _reasonable_ doubt that the deceased died from arsenical poisoning.
Mr. Justice Stephen, in his summing-up, put this issue to the jury in the following words:
“It is _essential_ to this charge that the man _died_ of arsenic. This question must be the foundation of a verdict unfavorable to the prisoner, that he _died of arsenic_.”
It must be assumed that this was a question exclusively for medical experts, notwithstanding which the judge, in summing up, told the jury:
“You must not consider this _as a mere medical case_, in which you are to decide whether the man _did_ or _did not die of arsenic poisoning according to the medical evidence_. You must _not consider it as a mere chemical case_, in which you decide whether the man _died from arsenic which was discovered as the result of a chemical analysis_. You must decide it as a _great and highly important case_, involving in itself not only medical and chemical questions, but involving in itself a most highly important _moral question_.”
Dr. Humphreys gave it as his opinion that the appearances at the post-mortem were _consistent with congestion_ of the stomach not _necessarily caused by an irritant poison_, and that the symptoms during life were also consistent with congestion not caused by an irritant poison, but with acute inflammation of the stomach and intestines, produced by any cause whatever, and which would produce similar pathological results. He thought death was caused by some irritant poison, most likely arsenic, but he _would not like to swear that it was_. Dr. Humphreys’ evidence, therefore, amounted to this, that the deceased died from gastro-enteritis, a natural disease, attributable to a variety of causes, and that, apart from the suggestions already referred to, he would have certified accordingly.