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CHAPTER I.
VIVISECTION IN MEDICAL SCHOOLS.
UPON no ethical question of our day is there a more striking difference of opinion than regarding the value or the righteousness of experimentation upon living animals. About this practice the atmosphere of controversy is thick with the dust of contradiction and dispute. "It is one of the foundations of medical science," asserts one authority. "The conclusions of vivisection are absolutely worthless," is the reply of one of the most eminent surgeons of our time.1 "It is a mild, merciful, and, for the most part, painless, interrogation of Nature, and her secrets of life," says a recent apologist and advocate of vivisection. "The experiments of certain physiologists are those of inhuman devils," says Canon Wilberforce, of England. Among contradictions like these one may well ask, where is truth to be found ?
The solution of this strange divergence of opinion is not difficult ; it lies simply in the absence of careful definitions
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of the words we use. "Vivisection" is a term which includes some kinds of operations upon living animals involving excruciating and prolonged torture ; and some other kinds of operation which simply destroy life with the discomfort of induced disease ; and yet other experiments which involve no pain whatever. It is a practice of almost infinite variety and complexity. To speak of it as inevitably involving the infliction of torture is to betray ignorance ; to defend it on the ground that pain is never inflicted, and that alleged abuses rarely, if ever, occur, is to state what every student of physiology knows to be false.
Atrocities of vivisection are facts of history. It is well perhaps at the outset to take a glance at some of them. What has been done by men without pity, in the hope to wrest from Nature something she has hid ?
The abuses of research include every form of excruciating and lingering torment that can be conceived. In the august name of Science, animals have been subjected to burning, baking, freezing ; saturation with inflammable oil and then setting on fire ; starvation to death ; skinning alive ; larding the feet with nails ; crushing and tormenting in every imaginable way. Human ingenuity has taxed itself to the utmost to devise some new torture, that one may observe what curious results will ensue. For instance, Dr. Brachet, of Paris, by various torments, inspired a dog with the utmost anger, and then, "when the animal became furious whenever it saw me, I put out its eyes. I could then appear before it without the manifestation of any aversion
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I spoke, and immediately its anger was renewed. I then disorganized the internal ear as much as I could, and when intense inflammation made it deaf, then I went to its side, spoke aloud, and even caressed it without its falling into a rage." Of this one man Dr. Elliotson, in his work on "Human Physiology," goes out of his way to say : "I cannot refrain from expressing my horror at the amount of torture which Dr. Brachet inflicted. I hardly think knowledge is worth having at such a purchase." 1
Von Lesser, of Germany, made a long series of experiments in scalding animals to death. He "plunged a dog for thirty seconds into boiling water ;" he "scalds another four times, at various intervals ;" even animals which have just passed through the pangs of parturition do not escape.2 Dr. Castex, of Paris, fastens a dog to the dissecting-table and, discarding the use of anæsthetics, stands above it "with a large empty stone bottle. I strike with all my strength a dozen violent blows on the thighs. By its violent cries the animal shows that the blows are keenly felt." Of another victim : "I dislocate both the shoulders, doing it with difficulty ; it appears to suffer greatly ;" 3 and so on through the long series.
Chauveau "consecrated" more than eighty large animals, mostly horses and mules, worn out in the service of man, to almost the extremest torture possible to conceive,
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not, as he expressly tells us, "to solve any problem in medical theory," but simply to see what degree of pain can be inflicted through irritation of the spinal cord. Mantegazza, of Milan, devoted a year to the infliction of torment upon animals—some pregnant, some nursing their young—in a long series of experiments which had no conceivable relation to the cure of disease, and which ended in the attainment of no beneficial or even instructive results. To produce what he desired—the extremest degree of pain possible—he invented a new machine, which he calls his "tormentor," and in this fiendish device, little animals, which had been first "quilted with long thin nails," so that the slightest movement is agony, are racked with added torments ; torn and twisted, crushed and lacerated, hour by hour, till crucified Nature will no longer endure, and sends death as a tardy release. Yet all these experiments, repeated day after day, were conducted, as Mantegazza himself asserts, not with pity or repugnance ; of that, no admission is made ; but "with much delight and extreme patience for the space of a year." 1 One stands in mute amazement at revelations like these. Dante in his "Inferno" never dreamed of torture so awful as certain refinements of torment which Professor Mantegazza invented and executed ; the details cannot be told.2 Yet is there a vivisection more awful to contemplate than a man like this who has succeeded in plucking from his heart every sentiment of pity or instinct of compassion? And
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how barren of benefit were the results of these experiments ! Out of all these multiplied torments of Richet and Mantegazza, of Chauveau and Castex, of Magendie and Brown-Séquard, Science has found not one single remedy to disease, not one discovery of the slightest value to mankind !
What have the atrocities of experimentation to do with America? Much, every way. There is hardly a physiologist in this country who will not admit that such cruelties are to be deplored ; and that the ardor of scientific curiosity has driven these men into unpardonable excess. But how did it happen? Was it because they were by nature more brutal than other men? Probably not. On one point the teaching of History is uniform. Wherever is conferred power without responsibility, there will follow—there must follow—license and abuse. It is the relation of cause and effect. Perhaps we execrate unduly the heartlessness of a Nero or a Robespierre, a Magendie or a Mantegazza. They were but the natural product of a selfish civilization, which made them monsters of cruelty, only by the gift of absolute power.
But are such glaring abuses possible in America? Why not? The realm of pain has here no boundaries which investigation is required to observe. In no American State or Commonwealth is there any law, any statute of any kind whatever, which would prevent these same experiments from being repeated here as often as desired ! Now, is it probable that in a country like ours, with a population drawn from every foreign source,
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experimental research, thus unrestrained, remains free from the excesses which have stained it everywhere else—in Italy, in Germany, in France? The absence of clear, definite, and reasonable limitations, beyond which vivisection becomes cruelty, and should not go—is of itself an invitation to abuse. Such restrictions elsewhere have been successfully initiated. In England, Scotland, and Ireland—countries whose medical skill is quite equal to our own—a painful experiment for the illustration of facts already known has been prohibited for over fifteen years. The law there has placed a limit ; and the law is obeyed. It has not remedied every evil, but at any rate it has prevented to a large extent that "abuse of vivisection by reckless, unfeeling, and unskilful persons," which Dr. John C. Dalton admitted and deplored.
Not merely the absence of legal limitations, but the absence of all supervision, is another invitation to excess. Up to fifteen or twenty years ago, when agitation against cruelty had just begun, it was the custom not only to show results of experiments but to perform even the most excruciating operations on living animals before a class-room of students, as aids to memory. There was no special secrecy about them ; anyone able to find his way to the lecture-room could observe everything. If there were indefensible cruelties, they were at any rate as unconcealed and as openly done as in Paris to-day. Now, all this is changed. Experimentation has vastly increased ; but it exists largely in comparative secrecy, behind locked doors, guarded by sentinels.
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To the largest physiological laboratory of New York City even the President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals cannot gain admittance during hours for "work." Against reasonable privacy of this kind no criticism can be justly urged. An anatomical dissecting-room, for instance, ought not to be open to every passer-by. But if bodies for dissection were, to-day, as frequently the result of mysterious murder or violated graves as in the time of Burke and Hare, and yet all entrance to the dissecting-room, all inspection or oversight, were absolutely refused, we may be sure that an alarmed and indignant public sentiment would demand—what has been given—not the publicity of dissection, but its supervision and control by the law. For the world does not like overmuch secrecy, and right doing never needs it. We are touched with a feeling of horror, to-day, not so much by the long procession in the Auto-da-fé as by remembrance of all the awful mystery which preceded it ; the dim-lighted underground dungeons ; the application of the "question" at midnight ; the groans for mercy which met no response ; the shrieks of agony which only the stone walls echoed. The Bastile rises without protest ; but in course of centuries it becomes an interrogation-point which Paris cannot answer ; then comes a 14th of July, and it is swept from the face of the earth. Even Science needs that Pity should stand by her side. True, from the standpoint of anti-vivisection, inspection is not demanded ; it means, one says, "compromise and acknowledgment." But it means more than this ; it
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means accurate knowledge of all the facts ; the dispersion of error ; illumination, enlightenment, certitude.
"Misjudgment of vivisection exists," one says. Well, how is it to be dispelled by all this concealment and secrecy ? No real impediment to any experimentation that is not abuse, can result from bringing laboratories and all their work under the inspection of qualified representatives of the Societies for protection of Animals' Rights and the prevention of cruelty.
Upon the excesses into which a perverted zeal or cruel indifference has led experimenters in America, it is hardly necessary to dwell. Proofs are abundant enough ; one needs only to study our American text-books of physiology, where the various experiments performed, "for teaching purposes," every year, are frankly related. Once we admit the right to torture a living creature simply as an aid to memory, and where shall we put bounds to the cruelty one may inflict? Is it an abuse of experimental science to cut out the stomach from a living dog—the "infamous experiment of Magendie," as Dr. Sharpey calls it? I have seen it done, not in Europe, but America. To cut down upon the spinal cord of a dog for the demonstration of its functions—an operation which Dr. Michael Foster, of Cambridge University, has never seen performed, from "horror of the pain?" Where is there a medical college in America in which it has never been done? Is it an abuse of vivisection to freeze rabbits to death before a class of young men and young women merely to illustrate what everyone knew in advance? It is done annually. To
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divide the most acutely sensitive nerve in the whole body in order to prove what nobody doubts? It is one of the "regular experiments." To mutilate a living animal so severely that left to itself, death might occur ; to fasten it so that struggle is useless ; to set in operation delicate machinery which shall cause it to breathe by artificial force, and so to keep it through a long night of terror and pain till "wanted" for the final sacrifice of demonstration before students on the following day? It is not of infrequent occurrence in American laboratories. "It helps memory," says one. But what gain to memory can outweigh that blunting of compassion, that deterioration of pity, which all this familiarity with torture tends to induce? "What doth it profit a man" to see it all? Let Dr. Bigelow, late Professor of Surgery at Harvard University, reply : "Watch the students at a vivisection. It is the blood and suffering, not the science, that rivets their breathless attention. If hospital service makes young students less tender of suffering, vivisection deadens their humanity and begets indifference to it."
"But," somebody protests, "surely there should be no limitations or conditions regarding original researches?" Well, why not? Investigation in America has been absolutely unrestrained ; has it accomplished anything of value? Have not even American scientists been subject to an enthusiasm that during investigation, takes no account of the pain it inflicts? Look, for example, at that series of one hundred and forty one experiments performed not long ago in Jersey City, opposite
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New York. The object of the experimenter was, as he tells us in his account of them, "to produce the greatest amount of injury" to the spinal cord and its attachments without killing the animal outright ; and with this end in view a great number of dogs, with hobbled limbs, were dropped from a height of twenty five feet, so as to effect all the severest injuries thus designed. Strange, indeed, it is to read the record of experiment after experiment, and to note that "even a few hours after they had been dropped, when the experimenter presented himself to their view, the dogs not severely injured never failed to greet their master with extravagant expressions of joy." Well, what judgment are we entitled to pass on these investigations? What valuable discovery for the benefit of suffering humanity accrued therefrom? The highest European authority upon medical questions shall tell us : "It is a record of the most wanton and stupidest cruelty we have ever seen chronicled under the guise of scientific experiments. If this were a type of experimental inquiry indulged in by the profession, public feeling would be rightly against us ; for, apart from the utterly useless nature of the observations, so far as regards human surgery, there is a callous indifference shown in the descriptions of the sufferings of the poor brutes which is positively revolting. What conclusions can be drawn from these unscientific experiments? That dogs falling from a height of twenty-four feet were liable to rupture or injure lungs, liver, kidneys, viscera, blood-vessels, or bones ? Is there anything new or useful in this grand discovery? That pathological
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changes rarely occurred in the spinal cord? Does this help us to any similar conclusion, after totally dissimilar railway accidents to man? Not the least. We trust no one in our profession, or out of it, will be tempted by the fancy that these or such like experiments are scientific or justifiable. Badly planned and without a chance of teaching us anything, and carried out in a wholesale cruel way, we cannot but feel ashamed of the work as undertaken by a member of our profession." 1
This is the judgment of the British Medical Journal, the leading authority of Great Britain. Here we have criticism based upon knowledge of what constitutes an abuse of scientific research. It cannot be swept aside as the wailing of sentiment or the exaggeration of ignorance.
What may be done in America to prevent these abuses? Denounce the entire medical profession as in a league with "inhuman devils" of cruelty? That is folly. The man who has watched at midnight with some old family physician, by the bedside of his dying wife or child, will not hear you. Agitate for total abolition? It will be achieved sometime, when the conduct of humanity toward all that breathes and suffers shall be governed by ideas of altruistic equity. But what shall we aim to do for our country, and to-day? Is not reform of abuse the first practical step? The duty of the hour, it seems to me, is the excitation of interest in this subject ; the acquisition of accurate knowledge about it ; the encouragement of intelligent personal investigation. "Is it true," one should ask, "that such awful agony has
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been repeatedly inflicted upon animals by European physiologists, and that proof of their cruelties is based upon their own statements and reports? Can it possibly be true that not a single one of these accursed experiments has yielded to medical science any discovery of the least practical value in the treatment of disease? Is it true that no law prevents the repetition of these abuses in my own State? Is it true that such painful experiments are unnecessary for the attainment of medical knowledge and skill ; that every year a host of physicians and surgeons graduate from the medical schools of England, Ireland, and Scotland who never once in the course of their studies are asked to see an animal tortured that lessons may be remembered?" Decision upon questions like these is not difficult ; but let it be conviction based upon solid facts ; for that alone has chance to be heard, or opportunity to be effective in results. Men will differ regarding the justification of research where pain is not involved ; but never need the advocacy of use bewilder us into blind condonation of revolting abuse. It is, then, solely to the creation of an intelligent public sentiment that we can look with hopefulness for the slightest mitigation or prevention of the evils deplored. Its evolution may be slow. But, once aroused, public sentiment in America is irresistible when based on Right ; and before this tribunal no cruelty or abuse of scientific research can ultimately escape condemnation and the stamp of atrocity and crime.
Footnotes
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Mr. Lawson Tait of England.
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"Elliotson's Physiology" p. 448.
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"Virchow's Archiv." lxxix., pp.248-289.
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p137-3
"Archives de Médecine," January 1892, pp. 9-22.
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p138-1
"Fisiologia del Dolore" di Paoli Mantegazza, p. 101.
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p138-2
"Fisiologia del Dolore," pp. 102-3.
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p145-1
"British Medical Journal," Nov 15, 1891.
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