Philip Henry Pye-Smith

“ If you could be persuaded that chemistry can make progress without retorts and balances, that a geologist's hammer is a useless incumbrance, or that engineers can build bridges just as well by the rule of thumb as by the knowledge gained in a workshop, then you might believe that physiology also is independent of experiment. ”

“ He was a man of science, the friend of Hunter and of Cavendish, an anatomist and natural philosopher. The fruits of Tenner's discovery are spread over the whole earth. This humble village doctor has saved more lives than the most glorious conqueror destroyed, but his name is little honored, and the only monument to his memory has been banished from association with vulgar kings and skillful homicides to an obscure corner of the great city where his only homage is the health and beauty of the children who play around his statue. ”

“ If the art of keeping a community in health is but the application of plain physiological laws, it is no less true that the art of restoring the health, curative as distinct from preventive medicine, rests upon the same basis. In former days the physician was one who recognized what he called the disease of his patient, who referred to his books of precedents as a lawyer to his statutes, and who prescribed a proper remedy to cast out the disease. We now know that disease is, as the name implies, a purely subjective conception. ”

“ Of those persons who answer that they consider vivisection for the sake of sport to be almost as detestable as vivisection for the sake of duty, I would only ask first that they should deal impartially with both offenses, and secondly that since in the one case their opinions are opposed to the practice of genteel society, and in the other to the convictions of all who are qualified to judge, they should at least contemplate the possibility of being mistaken. ”

“ But if, leaving your secure fortress of defense, you come down with your rhetoric and your sentiments, your petitio principii, your ignoratio elenchi, and all your familiar fallacies and tropes, thinking that with such weapons you can meet, on their own ground, men who have spent their lives in the study of science, then no wonder if you suffer grievous defeat. ”

“ There is, I fear, another reason which animates much of the opposition to physiological experiments. It is nothing else than aversion from the methods and the results of science. It may be that an excuse for this dislike has been furnished by the pretense of false science, and the arrogance of much even which is true. But surely no reasonable creature, from such trivial irritation, can deliberately wish to check the progress of accurate knowledge by observation and experiment. ”

“ Is not this the very excuse which is held valid in the case of sport? Doubtless we ought to be ever mindful of every branch of duty, but such occasional forgetfulness does not show hardness of heart. It is an excusable weakness for a student of medicine to shudder or to faint at the sight of blood, but he learns that this merely physical sensibility becomes selfish and mischievous if indulged: he is taught to suppress all such exhibition of emotion, and to let it stimulate without paralyzing his efforts to relieve. ”

“ Whatever may be thought of the duty of the state directly to encourage the pursuit of animal and vegetable physiology, one would have supposed that at least what diplomatists call a benevolent neutrality would be shown to a pursuit so laborious and costly, which demands trained workmen and the devotion of a lifetime, which is so important for the national wealth and health, and which, by reason, by experience, and by testimony, we know to be the only guarantee for advance in the various branches of the healing art. ”

“ We, who are familiar with human suffering and sorrow, which our knowledge is all too feeble to prevent, best understand how, in testing some new remedy on a less precious fellow creature than a man, one who is truly humane may be tempted to forget the comparatively trivial suffering of a rabbit or a frog.
But some enthusiastic opponent will say: "I can not pretend to doubt that these experiments are in every sense of the word useful; but we ought not to purchase the benefit they confer by inflicting pain upon innocent creatures. ”

“ May we not hope that, before the close of the present century, the discriminating knowledge which alone prevents gifts of money from being a curse instead of a blessing to a community, may lead to the establishment of libraries, and museums, and laboratories by universities and towns, which shall bear comparison, I will not say with those of Paris, or Leipsic, or Bonn, but with the poorer but scarcely less distinguished schools of Heidelberg and Göttingen, of Würzburg and of Utrecht? ”

“ It is, therefore, plain that rational medicine, or keeping right and setting right the human body, must rest upon a knowledge of its structure and its actions, just as a steam-engine or a watch can not be mended upon general principles, but only by one who is familiar with their construction and working, and who can detect the source of their irregularity. ”

“ The disease of a host is the health of the parasite, and we cure a human sufferer by poisoning the animals or plants which interfere with his comfort. The same changes which in the old man are the natural steps of decay, the absence of which after a certain age would be truly pathological, are the cause of acute disease in the young. Pathology has no laws distinct from those of physiology.
When these now obvious considerations are thoroughly understood, it clearly follows that all "systems of medicine" are in their very nature condemned. ”

“ All that the art of medicine can do is to apply a knowledge of natural laws, of mechanics and of hydrostatics, of botany and zoōlogy, of chemistry and electricity, of the behavior of living cells and organs when subjected to the influence of heat and of cold, of acids and alkalies, of alcohols and ethers, of narcotics and stimulants, so as to modify certain deviations from ordinary structure and function which are productive of pain, or discomfort, or death. ”

“ Still more important is the relation of physiology to the national health. The commonplaces of hygiene which are now, one may be thankful to say, taught, if not practiced, in almost every schoolroom and factory in England, are the direct results of the abstruse researches of Boyle and Priestley, of Lavoisier and Pasteur. Ages of experience did not teach mankind the value of fresh air, or the innocence of clean water. ”

“ Admitting that medicine is an art, it is a purely empirical art. You can not detect the origin of many of the maladies which you are yet able to cure; your best remedies have not been obtained by scientific experiment, but by chance, observation, and accumulated experience ”

“ If any such are here, may I venture to tell them—in quietness and in confidence is your strength: the vast fabric of Christian morals is in no danger of being overturned by the discovery of a new chemical method in the laboratory, or of a hitherto undescribed animalcule. If noisy attacks are made in the injured name of science, you have only to wait, and you will see these attacks repelled by the true leaders of science themselves, or, at the worst, by the next generation. ”

“ With regard to the endowment of research in biology, I must confess that I should be sorry to see it undertaken by government funds. That such investigations are of public interest, that they are difficult and expensive, and that at present they languish for want of adequate support, is all true. But this country is not so poor, nor our countrymen so wanting in public spirit, that we need appeal to the national purse to supply every ascertained want. Great as is the national importance of science, the nation is more important still ”

“ Those only who appear deliberately to believe that our life is worth less than that of many sparrows, those legislators only who look forward to the time when wars will cease, not because of human slaughter, of devastated homes, of all the horrors which the world has endured for centuries, but because of the cruelties to which the horses in the artillery are subjected. ”

“ What is deliberately asserted is, that within the restrictions which all humane persons impose upon themselves, it is lawful to inflict pain or death upon animals for profit or for sport, for money or for pastime; that property and sport are in England sacred things; but that the practices which they justify are unjustifiable when pursued with the object of increasing human knowledge or of relieving human suffering. ”

“ It is absurd to object to the difficulties of the research or even the contradictory results sometimes obtained. The functions of a muscle or a gland are more complicated than those of water or gas, and their investigation needs greater skill, more caution, and more frequent repetition. Imperfect experiments can lead to nothing but error; criticism from other physiologists, or from scientific men experienced in other branches of research, is not wanting, and is always welcome. ”

“ There are, indeed, some who, fearing (as I think prudently) that, "while a little philosophy inclineth men to atheism, depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion," and desiring to subject the human mind to a bondage as hard and more degrading than that of mediæval Rome, would gladly call off interest from the unremunerative labors which are prompted only by the thirst for knowledge and faith in the possibility of learning more and more of the divine order of the world, to pursuits which bring obvious and material utility. ”

“ I have hitherto rested the whole argument upon the lawfulness of inflicting pain and death upon the lower animals for the sake of science and humanity, but as a matter of fact I may again assure those who, while assenting to the justice of the plea, yet shrink from what it may involve, that the great majority of experiments upon animals are rendered painless, and that the remainder are mostly those experiments which are most immediately and directly subservient to medical art, and happily even these are generally productive rather of discomfort than of pain. ”

“ Many persons, supposed to be educated, are so destitute of the most ordinary conceptions of natural science that they do not understand the necessity for experiments. So little do they appreciate the difference between formal knowledge and real knowledge, that a distinguished statesman once assured me that he would as soon have his leg set by a man who had gained what he called his knowledge from books, as by one who had "walked the hospitals." Next, there is the vulgar dislike of whatever is not obviously and immediately useful. ”

“ Why is it then that institutions which owe nothing to government assistance, and men who spend their time and talents in self-denying and unrenumerative service for the public good, are not suffered to pursue their beneficent work in peace? ”

“ To many unaffectedly compassionate hearts there is a peculiar pang in thinking of suffering which is deliberately inflicted, with only the justification of duty, instead of the excuse of ignorance or passion. ”

“ Only lately a learned body felt itself not strong enough to retain the admittedly invaluable services of an eminent foreigner, who had once admitted that when absorbed in scientific and beneficent researches he lost sight of any pain that might be inflicted. ”

“ The only restriction which Christian morality or in certain cases recent legislation imposes upon such practices is, that no more pain shall be inflicted than is necessary for the object in view. Killing or hurting domestic animals when moved by passion or by the horrible delight which some depraved natures feel in the act of inflicting pain was until lately the only recognized transgression against the law of England. I trust I need not say that it is only under such restrictions that physiologists desire to work. ”

“ Any one who would inflict a single pang beyond what is necessary for a scientific object, or would by carelessness fail to take due care of the animals he has to deal with, would be justly amenable to public reprobation. And remember it is within these limits that the whole controversy lies, for, after a long and patient examination of all that could be said by our accusers, the Royal Commission which was nominated for the purpose unanimously reported that in this country at least scientific experiments upon animals are free from abuse. ”

“ There is no question of the great importance of children being taught the rudimentary laws of health, the bodily evils of dirt and sloth and vice, the excellence of temperance, the danger of the first inroads of disease. ”

“ I know it has been asserted that the science of the functions of living organs is quite independent of experiment upon living organs. But this is said by the same persons who have denied that the art of setting right the functions of the body when they go wrong has anything to do with the knowledge of what those functions are. ”

“ On the most extreme humanitarian views no objection can be made to experiments upon animals in a state of insensibility to pain, and as these constitute, happily, the vast majority of physiological experiments, the question is narrowed to comparatively restricted limits. Is it wrong to inflict painful experiments upon animals for the sake of science? ”

“ The branch of physiology which is concerned with man, not as an individual, but a family, the branch which we now call Anthropology, is obviously related to practical politics, and it was not without reason that the late illustrious pathologist Rokitansky began a speech in the Upper House of the Austrian Parliament on the autonomy of the Bohemian nation with the words, "The question really is, whether the doctrine of Darwin be true or no." ”

“ That physiologists have been heedless, or even callous, in their experiments upon animals in past times, when men were strangely insensible even to human suffering, or in countries where a healthy result of Christian civilization has not yet been seen in habitual gentleness to animals, I need not deny. ”

“ Now, it has been the practice of all mankind, and is still allowed by the common consent both of law and feeling, that we should destroy by more or less painful means, that we should enslave and force to work, and mutilate by painful operations, and hunt to death, and wound, and lacerate, and torture the brute creation for the following objects: for our own self-preservation, as when we offer a reward for the killing of tigers and snakes in India ”