Honors For Dr. Vaughn

I he General Sessions court room of New York city, has for the past month been the center of attraction for the vast majority of the members of the medical and legal professions of this country. Dr. Robert W. Buchanan is on trial for his life, charged with poisoning his wife witH morphine and atropine. A very delicate and occult point in toxicological chemistry, is involved in this case, and requires for its solution the learning and experience of the most brilliant and capable of America's chemists and physicians. Because of the very notable scientists engaged as expert witnesses in this notorious case, a world-wide interest was manifested in it. On the side of the prosecution were found men of international reputation, suchas Drs. Loomis and Prudden, pathologists, and Professors Witthaus and Doremus, chemists. Pitted against this brilliant array oi eastern scientists, was a young man from the west, the mainstay of the defence, Dr. Victor C. Vaughan, dean of the medical department of the University of Michigan. The trial eventually resolved itself into a battle of experts; it was virtually the west against the east, Michigan versus Columbia and University of New York. Professor Witthaus claimed that by chemical analysis he liad found morphine in the stoniach of Mrs. Dr. Buchanan. Dr. Vaughan was called upon by the defeuce to disprove the claims of the expert for the prosecution. The doctor took the stand, and for a period of two hours delivered what the New York dailies cali the most able, lucid and interesting lecture upon toxicology that was ever heard in a New York court or lecture room. These remarks simply paved the way for the grand climax of the morrow, when Dr. Victor C. Vaughan became the cynosure of all eyes, in fact the central figure in the trial, and was declared one of the eading scientists of the world. In oerhaps the most unique and interesting scerk ever enacted in a court room, he proved beyond the Deradventure of a doubt, that )tomaines, productsof putrefaction, will give the same reactions as raorDhine. In commenting upon the work of Prof. Vaughan the New York Press referred to him as a master of science, and to his rivals as students of science. The University of Michigan and the medical department in particular, have every reason to be proud of Professor Vaughan and the reputation which ie has brought to himself and the great school of the west.