ABSTRACT
The circumstances of the Jury Court trial will show that it is an object of some importance to supply this defect in medico-legal toxicology. The practice of snuffing, smoking, or chewing tobacco, is not believed to have any such effect. It is true that the much more injurious and more permanent effects which every repetition of a dose of opium produces on the digestive organs and on the nervous system, supply a stronger presumption of ultimate injury to life in the case of that drug, than exists in the instance of tobacco. The habitual use of opium was believed by all the medical witnesses to be injurious to life; but it was worthy of attention that one of the witnesses, who alone could state special facts on the subject, had mentioned instances of opium-eaters who had lived to a good old age.
