Frances Power Cobbe

“ He who shrinks from cutting into a living animal, he who approaches a vivisection as a disagreeable necessity, may very likely be able to repeat one or two vivisections, but will never become an artist in vivisection. He who cannot follow some fine nerve-thread, scarcely visible to the naked eye, into the depths, if possible sometimes tracing it to a new branching, with joyful alertness for hours at a time; he who feels no enjoyment when at last, parted from its surroundings and isolated, he can subject that nerve to electrical stimulation ”

“ It is impossible to wound the head and open the skull without causing a severe shock to the system of the animals, and a more or less violent irritation of the brain; that is to say, not without producing a certain amount of pain. And we know the influence that pain can have, not only on the functions of the great organic apparatus (circulation, respiration, animal heat) , but also on the anatomical and physiological state of the nerve centres. ”

“ In the case where rabies is produced by a bite, or by hypodermic injection, interference with the length of the incubation period must be chiefly ascribed to the great variation which is possible in the amount, always indefinite, of inoculated poison which reaches the central nervous system. If then we wish to determine the intensity of the virus from the length of the incubation period, it is unavoidably necessary to have recourse to inoculation by trephining, which is absolutely certain in its effects, and to employ larger quantities than such as would be necessary simply to produce rabies. ”

“ When it is remembered that, according to Claude Bernard in his latest work, we may “take for granted that experiments, when not otherwise described, are performed on curarized dogs”—that is, on highly sensitive creatures, placed in a condition which he himself describes as “accompanied by [vi] the most atrocious suffering which the imagination of man can conceive,”—we have before us in this small Directory a record of agonies before which the brain grows dizzy and the heart sick. ”

“ Held a License for Vivisection at University Oxford Anatomical Department of Museum in 1878.
“Vivisection is specially likely to tempt a man into certain carelessness; the passive impressions produced by the sight of suffering growing as is the law of our nature, weaker, while the habit of, and the pleasure in experimenting grows stronger by repetition.”—Evid. ”

“ It is quite true that less frequent beating of the heart, and even irregularities of the pulse, may occur spontaneously, and certainly without ligature of the coronary artery. Any one who has made frequent experiments on dogs in which the pressure of the blood has been noted down during a long period, knows very well that intermittent pulsation, and even greater irregularities, are not unfrequent occurrences in narcotised and bound or curarised animals—irregularities which disappear or re-appear, as the case may be. ”

“ I have succeeded in a series of experiments made at different intervals, in so seriously injuring one hemisphere, that all the circumvolutions that touched the skull had disappeared. The animal lived for weeks with its crippled brain, and served for many observations.”—Verrichtungen des Grosshirns, pp. 3-8. (A work dedicated to his “English Friends.”)
“It is not often that two physiologists agree in matters relating to the physiology of the brain.”—Ibid., p. 9.
“I do not by any means claim that my researches can be of any value in themselves for the pathology of the human brain. ”

“ Blood was drawn from the carotid artery, the jugular vein, and the vena cava superior at the same time, the last drops of which already thickened in the glass cannula. Respiration had ceased. Only once after a long rest, did the dog draw a deep breath with open mouth as usually [83] happens immediately before death. The pulsations of the heart were scarcely perceptible. I then tried electric stimulation of the nervus vagus, after dissecting it out, but without causing any pulsation of the heart or breathing, either during the stimulation or when it ceased. Death was undoubtedly near. ”

“ It is now four years since the study of rabies was first commenced in my laboratory, and it has been continued without any other interruption than the enforced cessations which depend on the conditions of the enquiry, conditions which are very unfavourable. The incubation of the disease is always of long duration. There are never sufficient facilities to enable one at a given moment to multiply experiments. ”

“ What is your own practice with regard to the use of anæsthetics in experiments that are otherwise painful? (Dr. Klein) : Except for teaching purposes, for demonstration, I never use anæsthetics where it is not necessary for convenience. If I demonstrate, I use anæsthetics. If I do experiments for my inquiries in pathological research, except for convenience sake, as for instance on dogs and cats, I do not use them. On frogs and the lower animals I never use them. ”

“ Stimulation of the central end of a sensory nerve, e.g., sciatic, brachial plexus, splanchnic, &c., causes a contraction of the renal vessels simultaneous with the rise in the aortic blood-pressure. Stimulation of the central end of the vagus causes a contraction of the kidney (where the vagus of the other side has been cut to eliminate reflex inhibition of the heart) , and the renal vessels contract whether the stimulation of the central end of the vagus cause a rise or a fall of the aortic blood-pressure. ”

“ M. Vulpian has recently made a large number of experiments to ascertain the degree and character of the mechanical excitability of the grey cortex of the brain. In mammals, dog, cat, and rabbit, in the normal condition, he could never produce in this way the slightest movement either in the limbs of the opposite side, or in those of the same side. The mechanical stimulation was produced by rubbing the surface of the cortex with a small sponge, or a fragment of amadou, or with the points of dissection forceps.... ”

“ The experiment of dividing the sympathetic in the neck, especially in rabbits, is so easily performed that the phenomena observed by Bernard and Brown-Séquard have been repeatedly verified. We have often done this in class demonstrations.” “The cerebral lobes were removed from a young pigeon in the usual way, an operation ... which we practice yearly as a class demonstration.” “Our own experiments, which have been very numerous during the last fifteen years, are simply repetitions of those of Flourens, and the results have been the same without exception.” ”

“ After long and conscientious researches, M. Chossat concluded that the sympathetic nerve is the real heat-producing agent in animals. But if, after having cut the brain transversely in front of the pons varolis, after having suppressed all nervous action by a cerebral shock violent enough to cause death, after having cut both the pneumo-gastric nerves, after having made various sections of the spinal cord, after having dissected out the sympathetic nerve above the solary plexus, after having practised ligature of the aorta below the diaphragm ”

“ When by the aid of appropriate means, we suppress in animals the cutaneous evaporation, and thus absolutely prevent the discharge of water, vapour, and carbonic acid, grave disorders are set up little by little, terminating in death. In order thus to suppress the functions of the skin, it is advisable to lay bare, by means of shaving closely, the whole of the skin of a dog, sheep, rabbit, or horse, and to cover the exposed surface with a thick drying varnish. Animals thus treated succumb at the expiration of various periods, but they rarely survive twelve hours. ”

“ The sanguinary part of the operation begins with the insertion of the cannula to supply artificial respiration. Then the right carotid artery is dissected out. Afterwards, while artificial respiration is being set up, a square opening is made in the left wall of the chest with a knife and the bone scissors. The opening is extended far into the right pleural cavity, and widened downwards till it reaches the diaphragm which is severed from the ribs. It is best to make the opening in the chest large enough to avoid any pressure on the heart from the lungs or other neighbouring parts. ”

“ In spite of these material hindrances, which however the French Government, in its care for the great scientific interests involved, has done everything in its power to remove, the experiments which we, my fellow-workers and I, have carried out, have nevertheless passed beyond the possibility of numbering them.... If you take any street-dog you please and inoculate rabies in this manner by trephining, using as inoculating-material a portion of the bulb of an animal which has died of the disease, you will invariably convey rabies. ”

“ The well-known maladies which result from human drunkenness and vice have been cunningly conveyed to dogs and apes. The breasts of mother brutes nursing their young have been cut off, and the mutilated creatures dropped back to die among their little ones whom they can no longer feed. Pregnant animals have been continually cut open. An Italian physiologist (Mosso) injects putrified human brains into animals. The eyes are chosen as the special seats for inoculation, because, through the transparent body the processes of disease can be most easily watched. ”

“ What is the rule by which you guide yourself in determining whether animals shall be rendered insensible to pain or not?—When the mode of rendering them insensible to pain would interfere with the due result being obtained from the experiment, we do not so render them. ”

“ If the brain is really narcotised, the other nerve centres must also have lost much of their excitability, lesser degrees of narcotisation seem to me to offer very little advantage for the purpose we have in view.”—Pflüger’s Archiv., Vol. XIII., p. 375.
“By the following experiments Luchsinger believes himself to have found the most irrefutable proof of the existence of a really antagonistic action of atropin and pilocarpin on the excretory glands, and to have finally disposed of my thesis on physiological antagonism. ”

“ Paris, 1878.
“A physiologist” (Bernard wrote) “is no ordinary man. He is a learned man, a man possessed and absorbed by a scientific idea. He does not hear the animals’ cries of pain. He is blind to the blood that flows. He sees nothing but his idea, and organisms which conceal from him the secrets he is resolved to discover.”—Introd. à l’étude, p. 180.
Baked sixteen dogs and numerous rabbits in a stove. ”

“ The medical man who speaks with horror of the torture of animals in physiological experiments, will do well to remember how often he has prescribed most repulsive, and not always safe treatment for a patient, in order to obtain some insight into how it was likely to act. ”

“ It is impossible to convey any exact idea of the unceasing movements of the pigeon; it can neither stand, nor lie down, nor fly, nor perform any systematic movements whatever, nor retain for an instant even any position in which it may be placed..... To keep alive pigeons which have been thus operated upon I have wrapped them in a napkin, so as to prevent even oscillations of the head. ”

“ In startling contrast to the dog were two monkeys exhibited by Professor Ferrier. One of them had been operated upon in the middle of January, the left motor area having been destroyed. There had resulted from the operation right sided hemiplegia, with conjugate deviation of eyes and of head. Facial paralysis was at first well marked, but ceased after a fortnight. From the first there had been paralysis of the right leg, though the animal was able to lift it up. The arm it had never been able to use. Lately, rigidity of the muscles of the paralysed limbs had been coming on. ”

“ Experiments have led to different views in different hands.”—Ferrier (Functions of the Brain, Preface) .
“Physiological experiments conducted in these regions are most indefinite. The usual plan of investigation, viz., that of applying stimuli to the brain substance, leads either to negative results, or, if electrical stimulation is used, to results which, owing to the unavoidable dispersal of the currents in numerous directions, are not sufficiently localised to form the basis for trustworthy conclusions. ”

“ Experiments have never been the means of discovery—and a survey of what has been attempted of late years in physiology, will prove that the opening of living animals has done more to perpetuate error than to confirm the just views taken from the study of anatomy and natural motions. ”

“ I conclude with the remark that the experiments of Fritsch and Hitzig, however interesting and precious they may be, do not justify any conclusions concerning the functions of the cortex.”—“Ueber electrische Reizversuche an der Grosshirnrinde,” Pflüger’s Archiv., Vol. X., pp. 78-84.
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“The advancement of our knowledge, and not utility to medicine, is the true and straightforward object of all vivisection. No true investigator in his researches thinks of the practical utilization. ”

“ Deep injuries [16] to the posterior columns of the spinal cord are always followed by a degree of hyperæsthesia greater than after the laying bare of the nervous centres—hyperæsthesia which appeared in all parts of the body behind the place injured.... Before the operation in rabbits the most energetic pinching of the skin produces agitation but no shrieking; after the operation, on the contrary the least pinching produces shrieking and a much greater agitation. Sometimes the hyperæsthesia is so considerable that the least pressure upon the skin makes the animal shriek. ”

“ Expansion of the walls of the chest and abdomen by injection of gas into the lungs. First I cut away so much of the larynx through the open mouth of a frog that the animal can no longer close it at will. Then I sew the under jaw firmly to the upper jaw. I stop up the one nostril by forcing into it a short thick piece of wire. Then a similarly short and thick canula which is in communication with the gasometer is fixed into the other nostril. As soon as the frog shows symptoms of strychnine cramps, its lungs are set in communication with the gasometer by opening the tap ”

“ You are prepared to establish that as a principle which you approve?—I think that with regard to an experimenter, a man who conducts special research, and performs an experiment, he has no time, so to speak, for thinking what will the animal feel or suffer. ”

“ Made experiments on fishes reported to the Acad. de Sciences, Oct. 24, 1881.
“Pain is a purely central phenomenon. It is a sensation that may exist, even to intensity, without manifesting its presence by any external sign, and consequently it is impossible to gauge it. All physiologists know that during vivisection there is an entire dissimilarity in the manner in which animals seem to suffer. Some remain motionless, the eyes fixed, neither struggling nor moaning; they appear as if struck by stupor. ”

“ XIV., London, 1878, p. 680.
“Unfortunately, the results of experiments upon animals, as respects the exact localisation of lesions, cannot be transferred directly to the case of man, except that we have reason to believe, through an important experiment of Hitzig’s upon an ape, that the motor centres for the nerves of the extremities and the cranial nerves lie in the gyrus præcentralis, or centralis anterior (Huschke, Ecker) , in other words, that affections of the cortical substance of this convolution may produce motor paralysis.”—Nothnagel, “Anemia of the Brain,” Ziemssen’s Cyclop. ”