Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.
Atlanta Constitution
August 20th, 1913
Dr. Clarence Johnson, a well-known specialist, who was put up by the prosecution in rebuttal of the testimony offered by the defense in attacking that of Dr. Roy Harris, was the final witness during the afternoon session.
His testimony was stopped in the middle of its narration in order to give the solicitor time to investigate authorities on a medical subject on which Mr. Dorsey was questioning the witness at the time a discussion arose between the prosecution and defense.
“What is your business?” he was asked by the solicitor.
“I am a practitioner of medicine, with a specialty of stomach diseases.”
“What is a pathologist?”
“A man who examines stomachs in any shape.”
“What Is a physiologist?”
An objection was put to this question, the defense striving to show that the state had already shown what was a pathologist and a physiologist.
Judge Roan ruled with the defense.
“The specimens which pathologist investigate, how are they preserved?”
“In anaesthetic.”
“Do they not place specimens in formaldehyde?
“I would not care to quote authority on that subject.”
“Did you give cabbage at 12 to a person who had drunk chocolate milk at 6?”
“Yes”
“If the chocolate milk was perceptible in the contents vomited seven hours later, would that indicate a normal or abnormal stomach?”
“Abnormal.”
It was while the witness was being questioned regarding his opinion of the time of Mary Phagan’s death, determined by condition of the contents of her stomach, when court adjourned.
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