Viviparity

“ The formation of the organs of sexual generation, in contradistinction to that by lateral buds, in vegetables, and in some animals, as the polypus, the tænia, and the volvox, seems the chef d'œuvre, the master-piece of nature; as appears from many flying insects, as in moths and butterflies, who seem to undergo a general change of their forms solely for the purpose of sexual reproduction, and in all other animals this organ is not complete till the maturity of the creature. ”

“ On two points, then, the evidence of the [Pg 40] highest scientific authorities in Great Britain seems conclusive—first, that experiments upon living animals conduce chiefly to the benefit of the science of physiology, and little, if at all, at the present day, to the treatment of disease or the amelioration of human suffering; and, secondly, that repetition of painful experiments for class-teaching in medical schools is both unnecessary and unjustifiable. Do these conclusions affect the practice of vivisection in this country? ”

“ The vivisection of dull reptiles, and wild rats and rabbits, wherewith the elder generation of students contented themselves, is not alone in question, nor even that of the heavy beasts in our pastures; but, by some strange and sinister fatality, the chosen victims at present are the most intelligent and friendly of our domestic favorites—the cats, who purr in love and confidence as they sit beside us on the hearth; the dogs, whose faithful hearts glow with an affection for us, truer and fonder than we may easily find in any human breast. ”

“ I had also intended to refer in detail to the splendid results of vivisection in relieving the sufferings of animals, and in preventing enormous pecuniary loss to man. We are only beginning to see that vivisection is as humane to animal life and suffering as it is to human, and that for financial reasons as well as humane motives it is of the utmost importance to the State that such diseases as cattle-plague, splenic fever, chicken-cholera, swine-plague, and others, should be eradicated. ”

“ What can be more wonderful than that some trifling peculiarity, not primordially attached to the species, should be transmitted through the male or female sexual cells, which are so minute as not to be visible to the naked eye, and afterwards through the incessant changes of a long course of development, undergone either in the womb or in the egg, and ultimately appear in the offspring when mature, or even when quite old, as in the case of certain diseases? ”

“ The question of vivisection is but a part, indeed a very small part, of the much larger problem as to the relation of men to the lower life which is about them in their fields and in the wilderness. An approximate census of the species now on the earth shows that the number is between two and three million. ”

“ Scarcely more necessary is it to attempt to show that the same system of reproduction for filling the chasms which death occasions, and which is now universal in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, has always existed. Indeed, such a system is a necessary counterpart to a system of dissolution. And we find the same phases to this reproductive system in ancient and in modern periods. Organic remains clearly teach us that there have always been viviparous as well as oviparous creatures, and gemmiparous as well as fissiparous animals and plants. ”

“ Whence it happens that, in the copulation of animals of different species, the parts necessary to life are frequently completely formed; but those for the purpose of generation are defective, as requiring a nicer organization; or more exact coincidence of the particles of nutriment to the irritabilities or appetencies of the original living filament. Whereas those mules, where all the parts could be perfectly formed, may have been produced in early periods of time, and may have added to the numbers of our various species of animals, as before observed. ”

“ If vivisection be indeed the true method of studying physiology, if physiology cannot be advanced except by vivisection, if chemical observation and microscopic research be useless for the purpose, and nothing but the torture of animals and the demoralization of men will suffice for its progress—then, in God's name, I say, let physiology stop at the point it has reached, even till the day of doom.—I am, Sir, with apologies for the length of this letter, yours, etc. ”

“ Consequently, in all sexually-reproducing or multicellular organisms, natural selection set to work to reduce the term of individual lifetimes within the narrowest limits that in the case of each species were compatible with the procreation and the rearing of progeny. Nevertheless, in all these sexually-reproducing organisms the primitive endowment of immortality has been retained with respect to their germ-plasm, which has thus been continuous, through numberless generations of perishing organisms, from the first origin of sexual reproduction till the present time. ”

“ These phenomena are (1) parthenogenesis; (2) oviparous and viviparous reproduction; (3) the production of generations of individuals in which the sexes are very unequally represented, males being frequently entirely absent; (4) the production of individuals differing as to the acquirement of wings, some remaining entirely apterous, while others go on to the winged form; (5) the production of individuals of the same sex with different sexual organs, and distinctions in the very early (but not the earliest) stages of the formation of the individual ”

“ The chief evidences of the theory of descent are to be found in homologies, in the correspondences of organs and functions, as revealed by comparative anatomy and physiology, in the recapitulation revealed by embryology, in the structure of parasites, in rudimentary organs and reversions to earlier stages, in the distribution of animals and plants, and in the possibility of still transforming, at least to a slight extent, one species into another, by experimental breeding.
Transformation and differentiation go on in nature as a vast, ceaseless, but blind process of selection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is indeed a kind of virgin-birth; and is well illustrated in the vegetable world by the budding of bulbs, or by the fact that a twig torn from a shrub and placed in the ground will commonly grow and continue the life of the parent plant; or in the lower stages of the animal world, where, among many of the worms, insects, sponges, &c., the life may similarly be continued by division, or by the extrusion of a bud or an egg, without any sex-contact or sex-action whatever. ”

“ The circulation of fluids in vessels may exist in hydraulic machines, but the power of reproduction belongs alone to life. This reproduction of plants and of animals is of two kinds, which may be termed solitary and sexual. The former of these, as in the reproduction of the buds of trees, and of the bulbs of tulips, and of the polypus, and aphis, appears to be the first or most simple mode of generation, as many of these organic beings afterwards acquire sexual organs, as the flowers of seedling trees, and of seedling tulips, and the autumnal progeny of the aphis. ”

“ Thus far have we treated mainly of the generation of oviparous animals; we have still to speak particularly of the other species of generation, the viviparous, to wit, in which many things identical with those we have noticed in oviparous generation will come to be observed. These we have reduced into order, and here at length present for consideration. Even the parts that appear paradoxical and in contradiction with the current views of generation will, I believe, be found entirely in conformity with truth. ”

“ III. The utility of vivisection in advancing therapeutics, despite much argument, still remains an open question. No one is so foolish as to deny the possibility of future usefulness to any discovery whatever; but there is a distinction, very easily slurred over in the eagerness of debate, between present applicability [Pg 72] and remotely potential service. If the pains inflicted on animals are absolutely necessary to the protection of human life and the advancement of practical skill in medicine, should sentiment be permitted to check investigation? ”

“ I. It is undeniable that to the practice of vivisection we are indebted for very much of our present knowledge of physiology. This is the fortress of the advocates of vivisection, [Pg 21] and a certain refuge when other arguments are of no avail.
II. As a means of teaching physiological facts, vivisection is unsurpassed. No teacher of science needs to be told the vast superiority of demonstration over affirmation. Take for instance, the circulation of the blood. ”

“ And some which have feet, as man, and some which have not, as the whale and dolphin, are internally viviparous. By this character then it is not possible to divide them, nor is any of the locomotive organs the cause of this difference, but it is those animals which are more perfect in their nature and participate in a purer element which are viviparous, for nothing is internally viviparous unless it receive and breathe out air. ”

“ To state the matter roughly, all processes involved both in growing old and in growing young might conceivably be arranged on a kind of Porphery ladder with agamic forms of indefinite reproduction, as illustrated in unicellular organisms or in germ plasm at the lower or summum gens end, and the most differentiated cells that have progressively lost the power of reproducing the whole organism, regenerating lost parts, power to grow, divide, and280 nourish themselves, at the top of the ladder, representing the infima species. ”

“ We have yet to consider this question in its other aspect; we have to examine not only the effects of vivisection as far as animals are concerned, but also its influence on man himself. Little, however, need be said. Necessary vivisection, we have shown, cannot be called cruel. The question of the necessity of any particular case can only be judged by the investigator himself. I content myself with asserting that any attempt to draw up, for the guidance of others, a general definition of necessary and unnecessary vivisection, must prove utterly futile. ”

“ Last of all the various tribes of vegetables are to be enumerated amongst the inferior orders of animals. Of these the anthers and stigmas have already been shewn to possess some organs of sense, to be nourished by honey, and to have the power of generation like insects, and have thence been announced amongst the animal kingdom in Sect. XIII. and to these must be added the buds and bulbs which constitute the viviparous offspring of vegetation. The former I suppose to be beholden to a single living filament for their seminal or amatorial procreation ”

“ Sexual reproduction does not essentially differ, as we have seen, from budding or self-division, and these processes graduate through the repair of injuries into ordinary development and growth; it might therefore be expected that every character would be as regularly transmitted by all the methods of reproduction as by continued growth. ”

“ But only recently have improved instruments and methods transformed a former invisible field into a true vivarium of beings, each having its distinctive size, color, form, requirement for food and place, with its cycle of birth, life, and death peculiar to its species. ”

“ Our present subject is of some importance, from having an intimate connection with the causes of variability. Indirectly it perhaps bears on the sterility of species when crossed: for as, on the one hand, slight changes in the conditions of life are favourable to plants and animals, and the crossing of varieties adds to the size, vigour, and fertility of their offspring; so, on the other hand, certain other changes in the conditions of life cause sterility ”

“ Man, then, and all vivipara that have feet, and, further, all red-blooded ovipara, appear to have the use of all the five senses, except where some isolated species has been subjected to mutilation, as in the case of the mole. ”

“ As growth, organization, and reproduction are the functions of physical life, as soon as [Pg 28] the primordial germ began to live, it began to grow, to fashion organs however simple, for its nourishment and increase, and for the reproduction, in some way, of living forms like itself. ”

“ While admitting that generation, sexual or asexual, is the mode of reproduction found among animals possessed of complex structure, the partisans of spontaneous generation held, on the strength of their experiments, that certain very low organisms might be developed spontaneously, without specific germs, in infusions of organic substances. ”

“ THE LIMITATIONS AND ERRORS OF THE VIVISECTIONISTS The first that strikes one is an exaggeration of the importance and extent of the vivisection method. As valuable an aid as it is, it is not the only, and perhaps it is not the chief, method of ascertaining medical truth. It has without doubt often been used when other methods would have been productive of more certain results. ”