"Did you suggest to him that the patient was dying of poison?"

"I did, but he would not agree with me. Therefore I could not do
anything more, as he was the physician in charge."

"Is Dr. Fisher a skilful man?"

"Yes."

"As skilful as you are yourself?"

This was a hard question, but with Dr. Fisher present, only one answer
was possible.

"Certainly, but we are all liable to make a mistake."

This was a bad effort to help his cause, for Mr. Bliss quickly
interposed.

"Even you are liable to make a mistake, eh?"

"Of course, but in this instance I saw more of the case than Dr.
Fisher did."

"Still, Dr. Fisher was present for several minutes before this girl
died, and though you suggested that she had been poisoned, and
proposed taking some action to save her from the poison, he disagreed
with you so entirely that he made no such effort. Is that right?"

"Well, there was very little that he could have done anyway. It was
too late. The drug had gone too far for the stomach-pump to be
efficacious; the atropine had had no beneficial result, we had no
means of applying a magnetic battery, and no time to get one.
Artificial respiration was what I proposed, whilst waiting for a
battery, but Dr. Fisher thought it a useless experiment, in presence
of the diphtheria. He offered to perform tracheotomy, but as I
considered that the respiratory centres had been paralyzed by
morphine, I could see no advantage in that."

"So whilst you two doctors argued, the patient died?"

"It was too late for us to save her life. The coma was too deep. It
was a hopeless case."

"Now, then, Doctor, let us come to those symptoms. You enumerated a
list, and claimed that you observed them all. The first is cold sweat.
Did you notice that specially?"

"The cold sweat was present, but not very marked. It would be less so
with morphine than with other forms of opium."

"Oh! So there was not much sweat after all? Now was there more than
would be expected on a warm night such as that was?"

"I think so. It is only valuable as a diagnostic sign in conjunction
with the other symptoms."

"Next we have slow pulse. This was a half hour before death. Does not
the pulse become slow in many cases just before death?"

"Yes."

"Very good. Not much sweat, and slow pulse does not amount to
anything. What next? Oh! 'stertorous breathing.' That is not uncommon
in diphtheria, is it, Doctor?"

"No."

"Just so. Now then, 'gradually deepeni