Treatise on Poisons by Sir Robert Christison

was first announced by Professor Orfila, who found a little in the churchyard of Villey-sur-Tille, near Dijon, and of the Bicêtre, Mont-Parnasse, and New Botanic Garden at Paris.[552] And although MM. Flandin and Danger afterwards denied they could ever find any,[553] a committee of the Parisian Academy of Medicine reported that Orfila proved before them the accuracy of his statement.[554] But the arsenic exists in a state in which it cannot be dissolved out by boiling water: It has been hitherto separable only by boiling the churchyard mould with concentrated sulphuric acid. Hence it cannot pass by percolation through a coffin into a body; and consequently it becomes a source of fallacy only when the coffin has been broken up in the course of time, and the mould lies in actual contact with the organs to be analysed.[555] It plainly appears, then, that most of the fallacies alleged against the validity of the evidence derived from the discovery of arsenic within the human body in cases of poisoning have no real existence; and that those which are real can easily be provided against by simple and obvious precautions.