Long and his defenders presented the liniment’s corrosive action as diagnostic: a lotion that supposedly acted only over diseased tissue and left healthy skin unharmed. Catherine Cashin was, in the Newgate Calendar’s account, “twenty-four years of age and in the full enjoyment of health” when Long applied the liniment to her preventively; it nonetheless produced a large, severely inflamed, infected wound that killed her, refuting the claim that the preparation could tell sound tissue from unsound. No independent chemical or clinical account of any such selective action exists; the corrosive liquid used on Cashin behaved as an ordinary caustic on healthy skin.