Terrible Effect of a Wager

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 63, 27 November 1886, Page 5 (Supplement)

Terrible Effect of a Wager

At Melbourne a few days ago a man named John Anderson, 22 years of age, wagered his companions that he could drink- a bottle of brandy right off. He went into a hotel, and drank off a bottle of cheap brandy, having previously drank a portion of a bottle of castor oil. The effect of the poison was not immediately apparent. When, however, the three nipn had got some couple of hundred yards down the road, the tierce poison, coursing like fire through this mad suicide's veins, seized almost at the instant upon, bwdy and brain. Anderson reeled and fell heavily upon tne path. Carter, with some vague knowledge of the power of castor oil, adminiatered the remainder of the bottle, and the crowd, which rapidly collertnd, brought soda-water ami chafed his limbs and hands. But the man, who had wagered his life against a bottle of cheup brandy was, to all intents and purposes, as dead as if he had swallowed a dose of prussiu acid. He , was in a state of utter collapse, and only the laboured breatning that convulsed the unconscious form, and chilly damps upon the ghastly livid face, showed that life still lingered. i The dying man was taken to the Melbourne Hospital, and the stomach i i pump applied. But medical a»>pli- | auces were powerless to extract th« poison from the blood, to bring bank motion to the leaden limbs or the I light of reason to the nmuuy-suorched i brain. Minute by minute, ami h>ur J ; by hour, the alcoholic prison fe<l ujv>n " the heart and burnt away the bruin , of the wretched young fellow, and eru the morning dawned th« h-'Mi-t h;il ! ceased to be.it, aud Jouu AuJeitou was dead by his own hand. |