This pamphlet shows the increasing involvement of physicians and surgeons as expert witnesses in murder investigations—and the growth of a reading public interested in news of such matters.

Courtesy National Library of Medicine

Medico-Legal Questions attempted to deal with every aspect of forensic medicine.

Courtesy National Library of Medicine

Courtesy New York Municipal Archives

Hoffman (1863–1948) worked as a grocer and a railroad clerk before his election as Cook County Coroner in 1908. Indicted on corruption charges in 1925, he retired from politics the following year, after serving six months in jail.

Courtesy Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society

The exposure of the circumstances surrounding Private John White's death at Hounslow Barracks in 1846 scandalized the British public. At the first inquest, the coroner's jury, upon hearing the testimony of a military surgeon, ruled that White died from natural causes. But Thomas Wakley, coroner of Middlesex, convened another inquest. That investigation found that White's death was caused by the 150 lashes he received. The re-opening of the case received much notice in the British press, where it was cited as a vindication of the argument that justice could only be served if coroners were democratically-elected, medically trained, independent and fair-minded. Public uproar over the killing of John White eventually spurred the reform of Great Britain's military disciplinary codes: White was the last British military man to suffer death by flogging.

Courtesy The British Museum

In May of 1878, Reverend George Vosburgh, the charismatic young pastor of Jersey City's Madison Avenue Baptist Church, was indicted on charges of attempting to poison his wife Harriet. It was alleged that he repeatedly administered overdoses of tartar emetic (a commonly prescribed medicine whose active ingredient was the toxic metal antimony).

Throughout the winter of 1877–78, the Vosburghs' marriage had been failing. The Reverend was angry that his wife had not given him any children, had undergone two abortions without his approval, and had accepted a ring from a "barman." In the midst of the quarrels between the Reverend and his wife, Mrs. Vosburgh fell gravely ill. James Sickles, her brother, suspected that the Reverend, while attending his wife at her sickbed, was slowly poisoning her. Sickles collected samples from drinks that the Reverend had served his wife, and also a sample of her urine, and brought them to the laboratory of Dr. R. Ogden Doremus, professor of chemistry at Bellevue Medical College. Doremus found evidence of antimony in every sample.

During the trial, the professor brought his apparatus into the courtroom and performed three toxicological tests before the jury. Doremus's demonstration on the witness stand was novel and impressive. It was featured in reports in daily and weekly newspapers, and several illustrated newspapers. For a time, it seemed to sway the jury and the public.

But the Reverend's politically-connected defense team cast doubt on the prosecution's case by calling disputing experts, attacking the chain of custody (Sickles couldn't prove where his samples came from), and by constructing alternative (albeit contradictory) explanations for what had occurred. At the same time, a visibly recovered and fashionably-dressed Mrs. Vosburgh sat by her husband during the trial and refused to testify.

The jury found Vosburgh not guilty, despite the courtroom chemical analysis. After his acquittal, Vosburgh resumed his ministry, but he and his wife separated. A few months later, additional evidence was brought forth in the press, indicating that Vosburgh had treated his wife badly and had in fact attempted to poison her. Public support for him faded and he was forced to resign his ministry.

The new science of toxicology was tested and found wanting in one of the most controversial murder trials of mid-Victorian England, the case of William Palmer.

On November 14, 1855, John Parsons Cook, a 28-year-old gambler and horse-owner, fell ill and went into convulsions while celebrating his horse's victory and £3000 in winnings. Surgeon William Palmer, a fellow gambler and horse-owner, immediately took charge of the young man's medical treatment. After suffering a week of excruciating pain, Cook died—though not before he accused Palmer of poisoning him.

The incident was one of a long series of deaths due to sudden illness with which Palmer was connected. A few months earlier, Palmer's wife Ann and middle-aged brother both died—after the surgeon had taken out large insurance policies on them. Before that, Palmer's mother-in-law, most of his children, his uncle, and four or five other people had also suddenly taken ill and died. These deaths—along with the fact that Palmer was deeply in debt, pressed by creditors, and holding Cook's prize money—aroused the suspicion of Cook's father-in-law, who requested that Cook's body be exhumed and examined.

The autopsy was performed by a team of local medical men, with Palmer present as a colleague not a suspect. During the examination, Palmer was said to have tampered with a key piece of evidence—the contents of Cook's stomach—by bumping into one of the physicians as he was lifting out the stomach, causing the contents to spill. The remaining material was placed in a sealed jar, but Palmer was also suspected of slitting open the seal.

The coroner consulted Dr. Alfred Swaine Taylor, who tested Cook's stomach and the small remaining sample of stomach contents. The results showed only a small, non-lethal amount of antimony, the active ingredient of tartar emetic, a common medicine. But on the basis of reported symptoms and circumstances prior to death, Taylor concluded that Cook had been poisoned by strychnine. Palmer was indicted for Cook's murder.

The trial lasted 12 days. Taylor was called as a witness. Renowned as a great authority on forensic medicine, Taylor had made grand claims for toxicology in his textbooks.

"Probably there is no branch of medicine in which we meet with a larger assemblage of truths ascertained by observation….To the physician, the pathologist, and the medical jurist, a knowledge of [toxicology] is of great importance…in drawing a clear distinction between changes produced in the body by disease and those caused by poison, [and]…in detecting and punishing those…guilty of the crime of poisoning." —Alfred Swaine Taylor, M.D., English toxicologist, 1848

The defense's strategy was to put Taylor's expertise, and toxicology itself, on trial. Palmer's lawyers showed that Taylor had no direct knowledge of the effects of strychnine on humans, having only observed the effects of strychnine on ten rabbits in an experiment performed more than twenty years earlier. They put opposing experts on the stand who contradicted Taylor, and they claimed that Taylor, who had a haughty demeanor on the witness stand, was biased and made prejudicial statements to the press.

The prosecution countered that Palmer's tampering rendered thorough chemical analysis impossible, and that Cook's poisoning was particularly hard to analyze because Palmer's medical expertise made him an exceptionally crafty poisoner, capable of murdering with minimal doses of strychnine, a hard-to-trace, organic poison, which is lethal in small doses and decomposes over time.

The jury agreed. Palmer was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. But his last words were "I am innocent of poisoning Cook by strychnine." The decision—and Taylor's claims for forensic toxicology—remained controversial. Taylor was besieged by public criticism and ridicule, but, over the years, he maintained his standing as an eminent authority. In the 1859 edition of On Poisons, in Relation to Medical Jurisprudence and Medicine, he devoted many pages to justifying his actions in the Palmer trial. As years passed and public memory of the case faded, he omitted mention of it in later editions.