"MURDER WILL OUT."

New Zealand Mail, Issue 387, 12 July 1879, Page 24

"MURDER WILL OUT."

Some sixteen or more years ago, a very great sensation was caused by the announcement that a wonderful discovery had been made in Italy—at Florence, I believe—which promised to do more for the cause of justice, in dealing with cases of murder, than all the laws theretofore enacted or police arrangements organised. The alleged discovery was quite a wonderful and sensational affair, yet, like all great discoveries, simple withal. As the tale was told, and widely repeated, it created a thrill of excitement all over the world, and even this remote colony may be said to have throbbed responsive to the sensation. The tale went that a certain learned Italian professor, whose name at the time was not stated, had been called in to investigate a mysterious case of murder. A beautiful young woman had been found foully strangled in her bed with evidenoe to show that an outrage, worse, if possible, than the murder had also been committed. The details were given at some length. Suspicion, so the tale went, soon pointed to one person, a rejected suitor of the lad}?-, a sort of Don Juan, who might be supposed as ready to murder as to defame a heroine. But there was nothing to connect this pe.-son with the crimes committed. It could not be shown that he could have had access without being seen to the lady's chamber, nor did it seem possible that a desperate struggle, such a 3 had evidently occurred, could have taken place without the noise being heard by an attendant who slept in an adjoining room. But in a short time the attendant, with some little reluctance, confessed that on the night of the murder she had slept a deep, heavy sleep, and had only woke up at a very late hour the next morning, feeling as though she had recovered from the effects of some powerful opiate, which had rendered her dead to all sounds for the time being-. The suspected man, however, proved what appeared to be an undoubted alibi, and he was about to be acquitted when a certain Florentine Professor appeared upon the scene, and announced that he would show, if he was permitted, who was the real murderer. He said that for years he had been engaged in the study of optics, on which he was an authority of European fame, and he had been investigating the images known to be thrown on the eyes of animals as images are thrown on the glass of a camera obscura. He had found means of fixing these images, even after death, and by looking in the eye of one bullock he had picked out of a large crowd the man who had killed it. He proposed to do the same with the eye of the young lady. Permission was accorded, and by means of chemicals he hardened the retina, and had " developed" the image upon it, and the image enlarged by means of a camera, was then and there produced, amidst a state of excitement never s-een in a court of justice before, and the murderer (the young man who waa at first suspected) confessed his crime, and was executed for it ; whilst his servant, as an accomplice before the fact, was sent to the galleys for life. Thus the tale was told and repeated over the world, but never verified, and never fully believed. After a-while it was forgotten. By a recent mail, however, after all had been forgotten, comes the startling announcement that the printing of external figures on the retina is not a fiction, but a fact, and that the fact had been verified by more than one man of high scientific attainments, Indeed, one respectable London paper was so enthusiastic over the discovery that it gave an account of the experiments three times over in oue issue, and announced that the images so obtained were to be called "optograms." Kuhne, a German professor, seema to have been the first to have recently tried the experiment, and he held a rabbit's eye to a hole in the shutter, and after exposing it three minutes to the light, cut off the animal's head. Then, by keeping the retina always in yellow lio-ht, and treating it with alum to make if firm,' he succeeded in developing a clear and distinct image of the hole in the shutter, just as it would have come out on a photographic plate properly treated. The London Medical Record states that the "beautiful" experiment was repeated by Dr. Gamgee, F.R.S., of Birmingham, who, in the presence of Professor Bunsen° verified the results obtained by Kuhne and got a distinct image on a fine red-colored ground of the opening in the shutter. But Professor Gamgee went something further. He not only got an image of the retina with the eye of a live rabbit recently killed, though the latter image was not quite so distinct as the former. It seems, therefore, to be proved that the retina receives and retains, for a time at least, the image last impressed upon it before death, and also retains any image which may be impressed, for some few minutes at least, after life is extinct. These are, it seems, sober facts. The image is there, and can, with proper care and appliances, be developed, but that is about the extent to which, a 3 far as can be judged at present, this discovery can go.