Vivisection

“ 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. ”

“ This is that in treatises on physiology, sufficient mention is not made of Vivisection, of its limits and of its abuses. At the beginning of a treatise on physiology, the author should distinctly declare there is always cruelty in vivisection conducted without chloroform or chloralose; the author should indicate that these anæsthetics ought to be administered under such or such conditions. Before initiating medical students into the study of life, it is also well to teach them to have respect for animal suffering. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the sight of a vivisection, the preparation of a laboratory experiment cannot be compared with the stupid and mischievous pleasures of angling and hunting. It is not a question of amusing oneself, of killing time, of diversion, of finding in the sight of blood or pain a recreation for boredom. ”

“ Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was nothing so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy; and by some odd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous eyes of Montgomery’s attendant came back again before me with the sharpest definition. I stared before me out at the green sea, frothing under a freshening breeze, and let these and other strange memories of the last few days chase one another through my mind.
What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men? ”

“ Physiology exists only because there have been physiologists. By that I do not mean to say that all the truths of physiology are due exclusively to vivisection. I only claim that physiology without vivisection would be strangely clumsy, limited to a few empirical facts, and that, if vivisection be proscribed, we must resolutely give up classing physiology among the sciences. We may study the stars and the earth, electricity and heat, geography and history, and are we to be forbidden to study the functions of living matter? ”

“ 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 believe the right of practising vivisection should not be accorded to every citizen, to every medical student; it should not be permissible for any chance person to take a dog, to fasten him down on the operating table, and to experiment on the brain, the glands, the muscles of that unfortunate animal, for that chance person is, in all probability, a clumsy and ignorant man. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Nearly every American school-boy knows that the contrary is true—that the use of ether as an anæsthetic—the grandest discovery of modern times—had no origin in the torture of animals.
I confess that, until very recently, I shared the common impression regarding the utility of vivisection in therapeutics. It is a belief still widely prevalent in the medical profession. Nevertheless, is it not a mistake? The therapeutical results of nearly half a century of painful experiments—we seek them in vain. Do we ask surgery? ”

“ 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. ”

“ In those days the horror with which men and women, uninfluenced by scientific enthusiasm, now regard the alleged tortures of vivisection was hardly possible. Thousands of human beings had yearly to undergo—every man, woman,96 and child might have to undergo—agonies quite as terrible as any that the most ardent advocate of the rights of animals, the most vivid imagination excited by fear for dearly loved dumb companions, ascribes to the vivisector’s knife. ”

“ 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? ”

“ What Vivisection has done for Man.—Dr. Charles Richet, in a vigorous defense of the practice of vivisection, demands that it shall be judged by its practical results, and claims that, if it can be shown that we have gained by that method of experiment the means of curing one or two diseases of man or of assuaging pain, it must be considered lawful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If it is possible that such men as Claude Bernard and Professor Flint have "jumped at" one utterly unscientific conclusion, notwithstanding the most painstaking of vivisections, what security have we that other of our theories in physiology now regarded as absolutely established may not be one day as severely ridiculed by succeeding investigators? Is it, after all, true, that the absolute certainty of our most important deductions must remain forever hidden "unless the animal can speak"? ”

“ Finally, one of the strongest advocates of vivisections, Dr. Anthony, pupil of Sir Charles Bell, would exclaim, if a mere [Pg 59] exposition of the lungs of the frog were referred to, "Fond as I am of physiology, I would not do that for the world!"
Now, what has our inquirer learned by his appeal to science? Has he gained any clear and absolute knowledge? Hardly two of the experimenters named agree upon one simple yet most important preliminary of research—the sensibility to pain of a single species of animals. ”

“ Even physiologists admit the paucity of therapeutic results. Doctor Sharpey says: "I should lay less stress on the direct application of the results of vivisection to improvement in the art of healing, than upon the value of these experiments in the promotion of physiology." [394.] The Oxford professor of Physiology admitted that Etiology, the science which treats of the causes of disease, had, by these experiments, been the gainer, rather [Pg 39] than therapeutics. ”

“ But I doubt very much if we shall ever arrive at demonstrating that it is better to allow one hundred children to die from diphtheria rather than draw a little blood from a horse; or that [Pg 120] we should practise vivisection on man so as to alleviate the diseases of dogs.
Concerning the polemics of anti-vivisectionists as to the uselessness of physiology, and the contradictions of physiologists, they are nothing but a tissue of error and ignorance. ”

“ They claim that were the knowledge acquired by experiments upon living organisms swept out of existence, in many respects the science of physiology would be little more than guesswork to-day. The subject of vivisection, they declare, is one which does not concern the general public, but belongs exclusively to scientists and especially to physiologists. That the present century should permit sentimentalists to interfere with scientific investigations is preposterous. ”

“ Yet most vivisectors would probably come triumphant out of such a series of experiments, because vivisection is now a routine, like butchering or hanging or flogging; and many of the men who practise it do so only because it has been established as part of the profession they have adopted. Far from enjoying it, they have simply overcome their natural repugnance and become indifferent to it, as men inevitably become indifferent to anything they do often enough. ”

“ Judging from English experience, the interdiction of all vivisection would seriously impede the progress of physiology in this State.
12. While physiologists justly resent attacks grounded in ignorance and maudlin sentimentality, they should avoid and discountenance even the appearance of bravado and indifference to the suffering of animals.
13. So long as the people and the Legislature are satisfied that physiological investigators and teachers regard the infliction of pain as undesirable on every account, no legal restrictions are likely to be put upon vivisection in the State of New York. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is easier to ask questions than to answer them. Yet, as one who for over thirty years, has taken some part in the agitation for reform, you may be willing to permit a forecast of probabilities, vague, it may be, as the vision of a sailor peering through the darkness that environs the ship,—but the best he can do.
No estimate of the future of vivisection in America can be of value which does not recognize the power of the laboratory at the present day. Half a century ago, the vivisection of animals was rarely practised ”

“ Being in Paris a year ago, I went one morning to the College de France, to hear Brown-Sequard, the most eminent experimenter in vivisection now living—one who, Doctor Carpenter tells us, has probably inflicted more animal suffering than any other man in his time. The lecturer stated that injury to certain nervous centers near the base of the brain would produce peculiar and curious phenomena in the animal operated upon, causing it, for example, to keep turning to one side in a circular manner, instead of walking in a straightforward direction. ”

“ Treasurer of the London Anti-vivisection Society, saying in 1900 that a vivisector has only to say that he has a theory whereby he hopes to discover a cure for, say, neuralgia of the little finger, and the Home Secretary promptly arms him with a license to torture as diabolically as he pleases and as many animals as he deems fit. And the National Society has made constant use of this phrase about "serious experiments" ”

“ It must be noted that hardly any of these opinions touch the question of vivisection so far as it is done without the infliction of pain, [Pg 31] nor object to it as a method of original research; they relate simply to the practice of repeating painful experiments for purposes of physiological teaching. ”

“ They were animals—humanised animals—triumphs of vivisection.
"You forget all that a skilled vivisector can do with living things," said Moreau. "For my own part I'm puzzled why the things I have done here have not been done before. Small efforts of course have been made—amputation, tongue-cutting, excisions. Of course you know a squint may be induced or cured by surgery? Then in the case of excisions you have all kinds of secondary changes, pigmentary disturbances, modification of the passions, alterations in the secretion of fatty tissue. ”

“ Those who denounce all vivisection as "barbarous" are asked to note that the performance of the ten experiments above described involves only the pain of a hypodermic injection or of pithing, since, whenever the animal is alive during the operation, complete insensibility is produced by anæsthetics. Most of the experiments, however, are done upon dead animals—that is, a man treated in like manner would be legally defunct. ”