The Sprague case has ended in a verdict of acquittal.
Mr. Sprague, surgeon, of Ashburton, was, it will be remembered, accused of poisoning his wife, her mother, and his father-in-law, by putting belladonna into a pie. It was proved that he had said he should think nothing of poisoning them, that they were all ill after eating the pie, that he had belladonna in his surgery, and that Mr. Herapath found belladonna in the meat of the pie. The test adopted by the chemist to prove the last fact was to put a morsel of the meat into his own eye, when it dilated the pupil to double its size, a well-known effect of the drug, and not a well-known effect of meat. There was, however, no evidence to prove either that Mr. Sprague put any poison in the pie, or that he had any motive to put it, and he was acquitted. Dr. Ogle, of Clarges Street, suggests that rabbits eat belladonna, and this particular rabbit may have eaten it, a conclusion which would suggest a strange amount of ill-luck on Mr. Sprague's part, but which is supported by the fact that the belladonna seems to have been not on, but in the meat, which Mr. Herepath, with laudable zeal for science, dropped into his own eye.
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