Stephen Paget

“ A guinea-pig inoculated with tubercle cannot be kept under an anaesthetic till the disease appears. The disease is the experiment, and it is therefore an experiment made without an anaesthetic, and not authorized by the licence alone. Again, under the licence alone it would have been impossible to work out the thyroid treatment of myxoedema, or the facts of cerebral localization. For to remove the thyroid gland, or to remove a portion of the surface of the brain, is to inflict a serious injury on the animal. The operation is done under profound anaesthesia—it would be impracticable otherwise ”

“ In another set of experiments, 22 of the experimenters submitted themselves to be bitten by the infected mosquitoes, and in each instance they took the disease. It was thus proved, past all reasonable doubt, that yellow fever cannot be conveyed by ordinary infection, but must be transmitted from man to man through the agency of the mosquito. It might be said, by the opponents of all experiments on animals, that the discovery of these facts has nothing to do with “vivisection.” ”

“ It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of these labours of Bernard on the vaso-motor nerves, since it is almost impossible to exaggerate the influence which our knowledge of the vaso-motor system, springing as it does from Bernard's researches as from its fount and origin, has exerted, is exerting, and in widening measure will continue to exert, on all our physiological and pathological conceptions, on medical practice, and on the conduct of human life. ”

“ By gradual drying, after death, of the cords of rabid animals, he was able to attenuate the poison contained in them. The spinal cord of a rabbit that has died of rabies slowly loses virulence by simple drying. A cord dried for four days is less virulent than a cord dried for three, and more virulent than a cord dried for five. A cord dried for a fortnight has lost all virulence; even a large dose of it will not produce the disease. ”

“ As a preventive against tetanus, in man or in animals, the antitoxin has proved of the very utmost value. This has been shown in a striking way in America. “One of the wounds most commonly followed by lock-jaw is the blank-cartridge wound of the hand common on the glorious Fourth of July. The death-rate from these wounds is appalling. An active campaign has been conducted throughout the medical profession to reduce this mortality. All over the country, surgeons and medical journals have advised the injection of tetanus antitoxin in every case of blank-cartridge wound. ”

“ The results of inoculation are in some cases negative, in others positive; the positive results are, in the great majority of cases, not a local change, but a general infection which may end in recovery, or in death. The diseases thus induced may, in many cases, fairly be called painless—such are septicaemia in a mouse, snake-venom in a rat, and malaria in a sparrow. Rabbits affected with rabies do not suffer in the same way as dogs and some other animals, but become subject to a painless kind of paralysis. ”

“ By transmitting the poison through a series of rabbits, by subdural inoculation of each rabbit with a minute quantity of nerve tissue from the rabbit that had died before it, he was able to intensify the poison, to shorten its period of incubation, and to fix this period at six days. Thus he obtained a poison of exact strength, a definite standard of virulence, virus fixe: the next rabbit inoculated would have the disease in six days, neither more nor less. ”

“ It is not once in a thousand times that a dog or a cat is used for inoculation. The act of inoculation is not in itself painful. A small area of the skin is carefully shaved and cleansed, that it may be aseptic, the hypodermic needle is sterilized and the method of hypodermic injection or of vaccination is the same as it is in medical practice. ”

“ The stomach is, of course not the only organ of digestion: the liver, the pancreas and the intestinal glands, all are concerned. The recent work of Pawlow and of Starling has greatly advanced our knowledge of the actions of the secretions from these organs. The whole chain of processes, nervous and chemical, psychical and physical, from the taking of food into the mouth to the expulsion of the waste residue, is now viewed in its entirety ”

“ We come now to the question, What anaesthetics are used in these experiments, and are they properly administered? The anaesthetics used are— (1) chloroform, ether, or a mixture containing chloroform and ether; (2) morphia, chloral, urethane. It is sometimes said that morphia is not an anaesthetic. That depends on the quantity given. Not a month passes in this country without somebody killing himself or herself with morphia or chloral. They die profoundly anesthetized: they cannot be roused; even the pain of a strong electric shock is not enough to rouse them. So it is with animals. ”

“ In 1891 George Murray published his Note on the Treatment of Myxoedema by Hypodermic Injections of an Extract of the Thyroid Gland of a Sheep. Later, the gland was administered in food. At the present time tabloids of thyroid extract are given. We could not have a better example how experiments on animals are necessary for the advancement of medicine. Now, with little bottles of tabloids, men and women are restored to health who had become degenerate in body and mind, disfigured and debased. The same treatment has given back mental and bodily growth to countless cases of sporadic cretinism. ”

“ The fear that, in a case where curare was being used, the effect of the anaesthetic might “pass off,” and the animal be left under curare alone, is not reasonable. The dosage and administration of anaesthetics is not left to chance. If, for example, an animal is receiving a definite percentage of chloroform vapour, it is of necessity under the influence of the chloroform: and the anaesthesia will gradually become not less but more profound. (See the evidence given before the Royal Commission by Professor Langley and Professor Waller.) ”

“ Arteries, veins and most of the parts of the viscera are without the sense of touch. We have actual proof of this in what takes place when a horse is bled for the purpose of obtaining curative serum. With a sharp lance a cut may be made in the skin so quickly and easily that the animal does nothing more than twitch the skin-muscle of the neck, or give his head a shake, while of the further proceeding of introducing a hollow needle into the vein, the animal takes not the slightest notice. ”

“ Professor Starling, in 1906, writes as follows of this part of physiology: “Among the researches of the last thirty years, those bearing on the circulation of the blood must take an important place, both for their physiological interest and for the weighty influence they have exerted on our knowledge and treatment of disorders of the vascular system, such as heart disease. We have learned to measure accurately the work done by the great heart-pump ”

“ By this method of drying, Pasteur was able to keep going one or more series of cords, of known and exactly graduated strengths, according to the length of time they had been dried, ranging from absolute non-virulence through every shade of virulence.
As with fowl cholera and anthrax, so with rabies: the poison, attenuated till it is innocuous, can yet confer immunity against a stronger dose of the same poison. A man, bitten by a rabid animal, has at least some weeks of respite before the disease can break out ”

“ It is probable that animals kept for inoculation have, on the whole, less pain than falls to the lot of a like number of animals in a state of nature or in subjection to work: they are well fed and sheltered, and escape the rapacity of larger animals, the inevitable cruelties of sport, and the drudgery and sexual mutilation that man inflicts on the higher domestic animals. ”

“ If the antiseptic precautions fail, and suppuration occurs, the animal is required to be killed. It is generally essential for the success of these experiments that the wounds should heal cleanly, and the surrounding parts remain in a healthy condition. After the healing of the wounds the animals are not necessarily, or even generally, in pain, since experiments involving the removal of important organs, including portions of the brain, may be performed without giving rise to pain after the recovery from the operation ”

“ In the event of a subsequent operation being necessary in an experiment performed under Certificate B, or B linked with EE, a condition is attached to the licence requiring all operative procedures to be carried out under anaesthetics of sufficient power to prevent the animal feeling pain; and no observations or stimulation's of a character to cause pain are allowed to be made without the animals being anesthetized. In no case has a cutting operation more severe than a superficial venesection (the opening of a vein just under the skin) been allowed to be performed without anaesthetics. ”

“ When by many dissections of living animals, as they came to hand,—Cum multis vivorum dissectionibus, uti ad manum dabantur,—I first gave myself to observing how I might discover, with my own eyes, and not from books and the writings of other men, the use and purpose of the movement of the heart in animals, forthwith I found the matter hard indeed and full of difficulty ”

“ It is to be noted that the mortality from rouget among swine, in years before vaccination, was much higher than that from charbon among sheep and cattle: “It was about 20%; a certain number of reports speak of losses of 60 and even 80%; so that almost all the veterinary surgeons are loud in their praises of the new vaccination.”
It would be too much to say that every country, in every year has obtained results with this anthrax-vaccine equal to those which have been obtained in France. ”

“ Moreover, the action of the thyroid gland has been made known, and the facts of “internal secretion” have been in part elucidated. (Claude Bernard, speaking of the thyroid, the thymus and the supra renal capsules, said: “We know absolutely nothing about the functions of these organs; we have not so much as an idea what use and importance they may possess, because experiments have told us nothing about them, and anatomy, left to itself, is absolutely silent on the subject.”) ”

“ There are a number of people who, calling themselves anti-vivisectionists, strongly object to these experiments on the lower animals; and it must be conceded that the humane reasons which they advance against it can only be set aside as “sentimental” if considerations of a wider humanity can show that the arguments of the anti-vivisectionists really run counter to human progress. The supporters of vivisection, properly considered, must not be confused with those who would make a barbarous use of this means of research. ”

“ It is not denied that the study of some diseases (plague, tetanus) causes some pain to rats and rabbits; but this pain is hardly to be compared with the pain and horror of these diseases in man.
We come now to Certificate B. If it were lawful, under Certificate B, to make an incision under an anaesthetic, to call this the “initial operation,” and then, without, an anaesthetic, to make painful experiments, through the incision, on the deeper structures, doubtless much pain might be inflicted under this certificate. ”

“ The invention of anaesthetics has greatly extended the scope of the experimental method, because an animal can be kept unconscious and quiet, without even a quiver of a muscle, during prolonged operations. Further, the introduction of the antiseptic method has made it possible to subject all tissues and regions of the body to surgical interference, and this has also had the effect of increasing the possibilities of experimental research. ”

“ Eraser's work on the antidotal properties of the bile of serpents is of the very highest interest and value, both in physiology and in sero-therapy. Calmette's work is an admirable instance of the delicacy and accuracy of the experimental method. The different venoms were measured in decimal milligrammes, and their action was estimated by the body-weights of the animals inoculated; but of course this estimate of virulence was checked according to the susceptibility of the animals; guinea-pigs, rabbits and especially rats being more susceptible than dogs. ”

“ There is hardly a physiological discussion of any width in which we do not sooner or later come on vaso-motor questions.” (Foster, Life of Claude Bernard) .
E. Cerebral Localization.—The study of the motor and sensory centres of the cerebral hemispheres began in clinical observation. Observation of cases, and examination of the brain after death (Bouillard, 1825, Dax, 1836, Broca, 1861) , led men to believe that a particular area of the left frontal lobe of the brain did indeed govern and permit the use of speech. ”

“ This fact, that complete removal of the pancreas, in a cat or a dog, may cause fatal diabetes, is of importance, because the pancreas in some cases of diabetes in man is diseased: but, at present, experiments on animals have not led to any certain or specific cure of diabetes in man. ”

“ It may be worth noting that the disease in monkeys is less violent and less painful than it is in man. By the help of these experiments, Flexner and Jobling were able to prepare a serum for the treatment of the disease, in the same way as the serum is prepared which has been such a blessing to the world in cases of diphtheria. ”

“ The establishment of a fistula, again, is an operation practised, as a matter of course, in large numbers of surgical cases. The stomach, the gall-bladder, the large intestine, are opened for the relief of obstruction, and kept open, either for a time or permanently, according to the nature of the case. Under anaesthesia, the organ that is to be opened is exposed through an incision made through the structures overlying it, and is secured in the wound by means of fine sutures. ”