Ernest Harold Baynes

“ But the human body is a complex machine, the organs are so interdependent, that in the presence of any given set of symptoms and signs of disease, it was almost impossible to be sure just what caused them, and, consequently, what was best to do for the patient. When the experimental method was adopted disease could be observed systematically, conditions could be controlled, and the phenomena that resulted could be studied intelligently because the experimenter knew exactly what had produced them. ”

“ At regular intervals the monkeys were lowered nearer to the stricken rodents. The monkeys were all right until they were brought within jumping distance of a flea, when they at once contracted the plague. These and other experiments left no doubt that rat fleas were the carriers among animals, and since rat fleas also feed on man when their natural prey is not available, it was an easy matter to show that the plague is spread by means of rat fleas. This led to a definite program for checking the spread of the disease, by relentless warfare on fleas and the rats that carried them. ”

“ Under false pretenses they obtain money from weakminded and unthinking people and, with this money, they wilfully and perennially attempt not only to prevent the advance of medicine and surgery, but also to break down the bulwarks of preventive medicine by teaching contempt of vaccination and of the use of antitoxins.
Few of the criminals in our jails are responsible for the deaths of more than a small number of persons; few of them have attempted widespread destruction of life. ”

“ If the United States were threatened with invasion by a foreign power, even if we knew that the invasion would be only temporary and that only a few thousand of our citizens would be killed, the whole country would be aroused in an effort to prevent that invasion. ”

“ Some are in the field of pure research, not having for their object any immediate benefit to man or animals. Experiments of this nature were carried on some years ago in work on bubonic plague among rodents in California. It was discovered that ground squirrels have a disease similar to plague and yet distinctly different. By a long series of experiments it was found that monkeys are susceptible to this disease, and it was predicted that eventually cases would be found in man. ”

“ In such experiments mammals are the animals chiefly used, because in most respects they most nearly resemble man, himself a mammal. Practically all the domestic mammals have been used, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, swine, dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea-pigs, and rats and mice; monkeys are also used. And all have made wonderful contributions to medicine or surgery or both. ”

“ After these injections had been proved to be safe by repeated experiments on dogs, they were tried on human patients with startlingly beneficial results. Even when the disease is of long standing, when the patient has reached the very last stage and is in the coma that immediately precedes death, injections of this extract, now known to the world as insulin, will bring him out of the coma, snatch him from the very jaws of death, and restore him to health.
Pacific and Atlantic
Not man alone, but animals also have benefited by experimental work. ”

“ But it is the opinion of eminent physicians that through the pernicious teachings of the antivivisection leaders we shall in a few years have epidemics that will destroy the lives of many thousands of children. Unless we wish for a return of the plagues and pestilences that once devastated wide areas on this world before the introduction of modern methods, we should use every means in our power to discourage these dangerous fanatics. ”

“ If necessary, millions of men would be drafted and trained to meet the invaders and billions of dollars would be expended to protect those few thousand people from the death that must otherwise overtake them. ”

“ Every wounded man received an injection of this serum at the earliest possible moment, and usually the length of time that had intervened determined whether the man would live or whether he would die a most distressing and horrible death. ”

“ The rats were trapped, their breeding places destroyed, and diseased rats from infested ports were prevented from entering the country. For example, when it was found that rats frequently come ashore along the cables stretched between the ships and the wharves, metal cones similar to those used to prevent rodents from climbing into corn cribs were placed on the cables. ”

“ These glands are quite often partly and accidentally removed during operations on the thyroid gland in man, with alarming and sometimes fatal results. Following complete removal of the parathyroid glands, carnivorous animals, including man, die within from four to six days. ”