and that this is hardly to be taken
against him.

On the other hand, if a guilty defendant has been so badly advised as
to give his own version of the case before the magistrate in the first
instance, it requires but slight assiduity on the part of the district
attorney to secure, in the interval between the hearing and the jury
trial, ample evidence to rebut it.

As illustrating merely the fertility and resourcefulness of some
defendants (or perhaps their counsel), the writer recalls a case which
he tried in the year 1902 where the defendant, a druggist, was charged
with manslaughter in having caused the death of an infant by filling a
doctor's prescription for calomel with morphine. It so happened that two
jars containing standard pills had been standing side by side upon an
adjacent shelf, and, a prescription for morphine having come in at the
same time as that for the calomel, the druggist had carelessly filled
the morphine prescription with calomel, and the calomel prescription
with morphine. The adult for whom the morphine had been prescribed
recovered immediately under the beneficent influence of the calomel, but
the baby for whom the calomel had been ordered died from the effects
of the first morphine pill administered. All this had occurred in
1897--five years before. The remainder of the pills had disappeared.

Upon the trial (no inconsistent contention having been entered in the
police court) the prisoner's counsel introduced six separate defences,
to wit: That the prescription had been properly filled with calomel
and that the child had died from natural causes, the following being
suggested.

1. Acute gastritis.

2. Acute nephritis.

3. Cerebro-spinal meningitis.

4. Fulminating meningitis.

5. That the child had died of apomorphine, a totally distinct poison.

6. That it had received and taken calomel, but that, having eaten a
small piece of pickle shortly before, the conjunction of the vegetable
acid with the calomel had formed, in the child's stomach, a precipitate
of corrosive sublimate, from which it had died.

These were all argued with great learning. During the trial the box
containing the balance of the pills, which the defence contended were
calomel, unexpectedly turned up. It has always been one of the greatest
regrets of the writer's life that he did not then and there challenge
the defendant to eat one of the pills and thus prove the good faith of
his defence.

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