excepting that the voice was still husky and feeble. By February 20th, it had regained its natural character.

The President said that several cases of this kind were on record, but none since the introduction of the laryngoscope. The case was one of great interest.

Dr. Webster referred to several cases on record, and especially the wellknown case of the celebrated engineer. He adverted to a case which occurred in his own practice, in which a cherry-stone remained in the bronchus sixty-eight days, and was then expelled by coughing. Louis relates a case in which a small gold coin remained four years in the trachea, and Dupuytren one in which a coin remained ten years. John Stevenson, an old Covenanter, had a bit of mutton bone the size of half a hazel-nut in his trachea fourteen years and nine months, and then coughed it up, and got well. M. Sue met with the case of a girl who had had a piece of chicken bone in her bronchus seventeen years; she coughed up and got well. Dr. Webster then asked the opinion of the surgeons present to the advisability of opening the trachea in such cases.

it

Mr. Birkett said the object of the operation in Brunel's case was to enable the patient to take in enough air to enable him to expel it in coughing. Mr. Birkett then referred to the importance of surgeons being provided with a fitting instrument to pass from the opening in the trachea, in order to dislodge a body from the larynx into the mouth. He related a case in which a child was brought to the hospital in articulo mortis, after having swallowed a piece of walnut shell. She recovered, but no foreign body could be detected in the larynx at the operation by a probe passed through the tracheal wound. Next day, by passing a larger instrument, an elastic catheter, a piece of walnut shell was dislodged

into the mouth.

Mr. Henry Lee said that, in Brunel's case, Sir Benjamin Brodie's object in performing tracheotomy was really to enable him to seize the coin through the opening, but he (Mr. Lee), thought the advantage of opening the trachea was correctly explained by Mr. Birkett. Mr. Lee then related the case of a boy who had swallowed a four-penny-piece. It was supposed to have passed into the larynx, and every time the boy was reversed he was nearly suffocated. He was sent to St. Thomas' Hospital, and one day, while there, felt an inclination to vomit; he heard something chink against the water closet, and was afterwards well. Mr. Lee repeated that he thought surgeons had an idea of putting forceps in to take out the coin, but he thought that Mr. Birkett's remarks showed that that was not the proper reason for performing tracheotomy in such

cases.

Medical Jurisprudence.

THE TRIAL OF EDWARD WILLIAM PRITCHARD, M.D., FOR MURDER. On Monday, July 3, this trial was commenced before the High Court of Justiciary of Edinburgh. The accused is a member of the Medical Profession, an M.D., of Erlangen, M.R.C.S. Eng., L.S.A. Lond. He was educated at King's College, London, was formerly an assistant-Surgeon in the Navy, and has many relatives in the combatant branch of that service. Before his apprehension he resided in Glasgow, where he had practised, it was said, with some success during a period of six years. He is charged with the murder of his wife and of her mother. The first portion of the indictment preferred against the prisoner states that the prisoner "did wickedly and feloniously administer to Jane Cowan or Taylor, now deceased," "in tapioca and in porter or beer, and in medicine called Battley's sedative solution, tartarised antimony, and aconite, and opium, or one or more of them, and that in consequence Jane Cowan or Taylor died on or about the 25th of February, 1865. The second part of the indictment charges the prisoner with having feloniously administered to his wife, Mary Jane Taylor," in egg-flip and in cheese, in the porter or beer and in wine, tartarised antimony and aconite, or one or other of them, or some other poison or poisons to the prosecutor unknown," and that in consequence Mary Jane Taylor or Pritchard died on or about the 18th of March, 1865.

The counsel for the defence moved that the two charges made in the indictment should be separated and not go to trial at once. This motion was opposed by the prosecution, and was negatived by the presiding judges. The prisoner pleaded in a firm voice "Not guilty."

As it is impossible for us to publish the whole of the evidence in this remarkable trial, we give the following summary of the whole case, and we append the principal Medical evidence, together with an abstract of the chemical analyses.

Dr. Pritchard is a physician who some six years ago came to reside and practise in Glasgow. He brought with him his wife, to whom outwardly he seemed much attached, and two children. Considering the comparatively short time he had been in Glasgow, he had got together a very respectable practice, with every prospect of doing well. During the latter part of last year Mrs. Pritchard appeared to be in a bad state of health, suffering from almost constant sickness and great depression. As she got no better she went to Edinburgh for a change of air, and whilst there her health wonderfully improved. The sickness left her, and she

brain, heart, liver,

was rapidly getting well. She returned at the end of a few weeks to her husband at Glasgow, and almost immediately the old symptoms returned. At length she got so ill that her mother, an old lady of seventy-five, came to stay with her, and in a very short time she also was seized with similar symptoms, and, after a very short sickness died and was buried. The certificate given by Dr. Pritchard assigned her death to apoplexy." Three weeks afterwards Mrs. Pritchard also died, and was sent to Edinburgh for interment, the cause of her death given by her husband being "gastric fever." Dr. Pritchard expressed outwardly extreme grief, and would, before his wife's interment, insist upon having the lid of the cof fin opened, that her countenance might be seen by her surviving friends, and that he might have the last and bitter consolation of kissing her now pale lips. Thus far all seemed fair and natural. But, unfortunately for Dr. Pritchard, ugly rumours had already spread abroad that his wife had not met her death by fair means; and these rumours attained such a tangible form that, on his arriving at Glasgow, before the last rites were to be performed over the remains of his wife he was taken into custody. Soon after the preliminary examination of the witnesses was commenced, grave suspicions were excited that Mrs. Taylor, the mother of Mrs. Pritchard, had not died from natural causes. Both bodies were exhumed, and portions of them, and the intestines, &c., were subjected to a rigid chemical analysis. The results were conclusive that both Mrs. Pritchard and her mother had not died from natural causes, but had been poisoned, and by nearly the same kind of poison. After five days' trial the truth had been elicted, and Dr. Pritchard now lies under the sentence of death for the two murders. The evidence given at the trial proves that Dr. Pritchard must have been one of the most hardened monsters that this world has ever seen. Not only did he administer the poison day by day-frequently twice or thrice in the same day-but he lavished on his victim all sorts of endearments, and insisted upon sharing her couch that he might more carefully attend to her. His own counsel's words in endeavouring to show that no man could be guilty of such a crime are worth recording. He said: "If he has committed the crime with which he is charged, I say it was a coldblooded, deliberate poisoning of those two trusting and loving women. If he be guilty, his cruelty knew no compassion; for, if it be true that he poisoned these women, he did not resort to the use of drugs that in a few minutes might have put them beyond the reach of pain, but chose rather to practise those devilish arts by slow degrees, so that the poison which he was administering should stop his wife's life gradually." Yet the jury without hesitation adopted it as emphatically true by bringing

in the prisoner guilty of those frightful crimes. The motives for such atrocious deeds appear to have been lust and avarice. In the year 1864 there entered into the service of Mrs. Pritchard a young girl of seventeen years of age in the capacity of nurse and housemaid. Dr. Pritchard appears to have been enamoured of her, and, on one occasion according to the girl's (Mary M'Leod) evidence, Mrs. Pritchard surprised her husband in the act of kissing her. Mary M'Leod, who gave her evidence with great reluctance, went on to say that she went to her mistress and asked her to be allowed to leave. Mrs. Pritchard, unfortunately for all parties refused her consent, said Dr. Pritchard was a nasty dirty brute, and that she would speak to him. As might have been expected, he succeeded in seducing this unfortunate girl, and it was drawn from her after a great deal of pressing, and by threatening her with imprisonment, that Dr. Pritchard had promised her that he would marry her if his wife should die before him. Soon after this the slow poisoning process was commenced. All the food which Mrs. Pritchard partook of was carried to her either by her husband or Mary M'Leod, and therefore it became evident that, if Mrs. Pritchard was poisoned, either her husband or the girl M'Leod was the guilty party. It was suggested by the counsel for the defence, that the girl had committed the poisonings in order that she might marry Dr. Pritchard at his wife's death, in fulfilment of his pledge. But this was too monstrous. No girl of seventeen, at all events in the position of Mary M'Leod, would have sufficiently understood the science of slow poisoning (for, unfortunately, of late in several cases it has been demonstrated to be a science) to have caused the death of Mrs. Pritchard in the manner described. The first motive, therefore, would seem to be that Dr. Pritchard was infatuated with this servant girl, and really did wish to marry her, or to carry on a liaison with her without any one to interfere. The second motive, as far as can be judged, was the desire of immediately becoming possessed of the property that would come to him in the event of his wife and Mrs. Taylor, her mother dying before him. He was in somewhat straightened circumstances. He had borrowed 5007. from Mrs. Taylor, and had overdrawn his account. He might have been pressed for money, although there was no actual evidence of the fact, and this may have induced him to poison Mrs. Taylor in a far more summary way than his wife. The old lady appears to have been, to a certain extent, an opium eater, or perhaps it is better to say that she was fond of Battley's sedative, and could, without inconvenience to herself, take daily sufficient to send half a dozen ordinary persons into the sleep of death. Tartarised antimony was not a sufficiently active poison to work speedily on her frame, and therefore,

although she had some of the same symptoms as Mrs. Pritchard, the quantity of opium she took to a certain extent neutralised the effect of the tartarised antimony, and therefore, the doctor had recourse to the tincture of aconite, which soon put his victim out of her misery. Dr. Pritchard, therefore, had a direct interest in his mother-in-law's death. The girl had none, although she might have in the death of Mrs. Pritchard. The accused murderer was proved to have bought the poisons which destroyed his wife and mother-in-law in most unusual quantities, even for a medical man in the largest practice, and no attempt was made to show how he disposed of them. Two or three servants who happened to partake in a slight degree of some of the food sent up to Mrs. Pritchard were at once seized with the same symptoms, and suffered severely from sickness; and on one occasion Dr. Pritchard said he would sweeten some egg-flip for his wife himself, and went to the dining room for some sugar, thence crossed to his consulting room, where he kept his poisons, and then returned to the kitchen and dropped two lumps of sugar into the mixture. One of the women tasted the egg-flip, and at once perceived an extraordinary flavour, and the effect upon Mrs. Pritchard was at once apparent. It is very rare in murder by poison that positive evidence can be obtained; but in this case there does not appear to have been a single link wanting to bring home the guilt to the accused. The poisons of the same kind, which it was proved he had bought and not accounted for, were found both in the bodies of his wife and mother-inlaw sufficient to account for their deaths. There was thus the motives for the murders, the manner in which they were perpetrated, and the results.

Dr. William T. Gairdner, Professor of Medicine in the University of Glasgow, deposed:-"I know the prisoner, I got a message to call at his house between the night of the 8th and the morning of the 9th of February. I think it was between twelve and half-past one o'clock. I was told to come and see Mrs. Pritchard. I went immediately. I had never seen her before. I met Dr. Pritchard at the house, and he took me to his wife's bedroom. He told me in general terms what was the matter with her. He said she had been very sick, and her stomach was not able to bear any food, and she had been some weeks in that state. I found her in bed. She was lying on her back, with her face considerably flushed. She appeared to be in a state of considerable excitement, and she told me herself that she had been sick. Prisoner spoke about spasms; but I cannot remember if I got the first information of the spasms from him or from her. I recollect that, after the spasms were mentioned to me, then he said it was catalepsy. He mentioned to me