the hint upon which he has acted, he says
with results of the most favourable
character. He began with baths of five minutes,
and, by gradual extension, found that fifteen
or twenty minutes might be endured by
excited patients, and that keepers could often
trace a curative turn in the cases from one
long bath. As to  the particular shower-bath
in question, three sane persons have tried its
effect for half-an-hour and they asked for a
half-hour more; while Mr. Snape himself has
placed himself under it twice,—once for three
quarters of an hour—once for an hour.

It is not true, Mr. Snape asserts, that Dr.
Diamond had never given these long baths.
He has ordered a bath of twenty minutes;
although the shower-baths are much more
powerful on his (the female) than on Mr.
Snape's (the male) side. The calculations of
the quantity of water discharged over Dolley
differ. The defence make it four hundred
and seventeen gallons—not six hundred and
eighteen gallons, which was the statement
for the prosecution—of which only one
hundred and nineteen gallons could have fallen
on the man's body, the weight per second
being only eleven ounces. Neither is it true,
adds the defence, that air was excluded from
the bath when closed; the engineers who
inspected must have overlooked air-holes in
extent altogether to seventeen and a half
square inches.

Mr. Snape illustrates, by extracts from his
case-book, the efficacy of long shower-baths
combined with antimony. He then turns to
Dolley, who, he says, was a strong man: a
man, who before his insanity was able to
walk fifty miles a day. He was a dangerous
lunatic, who had had one shower-bath of
fifteen minutes' duration, and again one of
twenty minutes, without medicine, only a
week before his death. The extension of the
bath to thirty minutes, was designed as a
remedial treatment only, and all witnesses
agreed that the order was given with
deliberation, and with no display of any
anger caused by Dolley's blow. Dolley's
upright position in the bath; his walking to
the fire; his speaking to a patient; his using
a towel, in the first instance alone, and his
helping to dress himself, are urged as conclusive
evidences against the notion that the
bath produced suffocation or prostration
and syncope.

It is then suggested that the cause of death
was fatty degeneration of the heart: a theory
propounded as possible by two physicians
who have made fatty degeneration their
especial study, and glanced at by Mr. Paget,
when, although he saw nothing in the heart
to cause death, he said that a microscopical
examination would be necessary to prove that
there was actually nothing to cause death. But,
the heart in question was not examined with a
microscope until the eighteenth of April, and
it was so much decomposed, on the day
following, that it was burnt. Now, it could be
shown that examination of the heart a week
after death is utterly valueless; and instances
would have been adduced by Dr. Ormerod
and Dr. Quain, establishing the fact that,
even thirty-six hours after death, the structure
of the heart had been too much changed by
decomposition to admit of a right knowledge
of its state. Moreover, it requires a well-
practised eye to detect fatty degeneration. Mr.
Snape's defence contains also this passage:

It will be remembered that Dolley had been in an
increasing state of maniacal excitement for a month
previously to the ninth, and that on that morning he
had from first getting up at six o'clock till half-past
ten been in a very and unusually excited state,
extending to three distinct acts of violence. Death by
prostration, as it is called, after fits of excitement, is
the frequent end of mania. In one of the best
modern asylums—Dr. Bucknill's, of Exminster—
these sudden deaths have been investigated, and I
should have proved by Dr. Quain, who inspected and
reported upon them, that in every such case subjected
to his investigation fatty degeneration of the heart
decidedly existed, and was the primary cause of
death, though the moving and secondary cause was
most probably, in the generality of the cases, cerebral
excitement.

Death by prostration I regard as a most inaccurate
and unscientific phrase, and I doubt not that, on further
investigation, death from fatty degeneration of the
heart will be found and accepted as the only
explanation of sudden death of lunatics so frequently
occurring in asylums after violent fits of excitement;
and Mr. Paget expressly remarks, in his Lectures,
that mania is primarily and powerfully conducive in
bringing on and maturing this disease.

Upon reading Mr. Snape's statement,
together with the case against him, all the six
gentlemen selected by himself and by the
committee of visitors to adjudicate upon the
matter, decided that they themselves had
no experience of baths of the kind in question,
but that, on the faith of the assurance that
shower-baths of twenty minutes' duration
had been frequently found to be beneficial to
persons of all ages, they did not consider the
extension of the bath to thirty minutes
unreasonable. Also, that there had not been
time for the tartar emetic taken only two
minutes before death to exert any influence
upon the system.

This, then, would have been the character
of Mr. Snape's defence had he been
permitted by the grand jury publicly to meet
the charge made publicly against him. Of
the sufficiency or insufficiency of the case on
either side we cannot take upon ourselves to
judge. Obviously there are on each side,
points to be made clearer by cross-examination
and by that searching scrutiny which is
to be obtained only in a court of law. The
defence was ready. If it be a bad defence,
then we regret that it was never subjected to
scrutiny; if it be a good defence, then we regret
that the accused was not allowed to prove it
good in open court; clearing his character
before every man who had heard of the doubt
cast upon it; and coming through the strict