| |
WHY I OPPOSE VIVISECTION.
No. II. (PART 2 * )
—BY JAMES MACAULAY, M.D., F.R.C.S.E.
There are thousands of medical practitioners who have not committed themselves to the advocacy of vivisection. Let them read the following personal testimonies :—
Mr. Lawson Tait, whose success and eminence as a surgeon all will admit, says, "Like every member of my profession I was brought up in the belief that by vivisection had been obtained almost every important fact in physiology, and that many of our most valued means of saving life and diminishing suffering had resulted from experiments on the lower animals. I now know that nothing of the sort is true concerning the art of surgery."
Another surgeon, equally distinguished, Mr. Clay, has declared that he owed not a particle of his knowledge or skill to vivisection, and has challenged any member of his profession to prove that vivisection has in any way advanced the science of medicine, or tended to improve the treatment of disease. In the debate in the House of Lords, Dr. Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, made a great impression by saying, "A London medical man of the highest eminence owes a discovery by which he has saved hundreds of lives to a series of experiments performed on a dozen rabbits." This was understood to refer to Sir Spencer Wells and ovariotomy. If Mr. Wells said this to Dr. Magee, he was guilty of what was an unjustifiable misrepresentation. His reputation arose after having, in 1857, witnessed Mr. Clay operate, who, since his first case in 1842, had saved hundreds of lives, fifteen years before Sir Spencer Wells had ever performed the operation. Sir J. Y. Simpson wrote to Dr. Clay in 1847, "The operation is your own, none can rob you of your claim."
Mr. Macilwaine, a pupil of Mr. Abernethy, and up to extreme age a recognized master in surgery, gave a strong testimony before the Royal Commission. He was about to quote instances of dangerous errors arising out of such experiments, but was courteously reminded that he was not before a professional committee. He afterwards, however, published an essay on vivisection, in which he showed that surgeons so distinguished as Sir Astley Cooper and Mr. Travers had been misled sadly by the reports of such experiments.
The confessions of vivisectors themselves should be regarded. M. Legallois, one of the most zealous and extensive experimenters, at last laid aside his implements of torture, and thus wrote, "J'eus presque autant de résultats differens que d'expériences ; et après bien des efforts inutiles pour porter la lumière dans cette ténébreuse question (the influence of the nervous system on the circulation) je pris la partie de l'abandonner ; non sans regret d'y avoir sacrifié un grand nombre d'animaux et perdu beaucoup de temps."
M. Colin, another persistent vivisector, confesses that "he had often repeated the same experiment twenty times with twenty different results, even when the animals were placed apparently in the same conditions. Sometimes the same experiment gave contradictory results." After making this confession, he speaks of the necessity for multiplying experiments—"It is necessary to recommence in order to learn !" It would have been better had M. Colin, like M. Legallois, resolved to abandon the vain and disreputable line of research.
Claude Bernard, a noted leader in experimenting, has said, "Doubtless our hands are as yet empty of useful results." The same may be said of Béclard, whose "treatise on physiology" is the basis of the "Handbook of the Physiological Laboratory," prepared for the use of teachers and pupils in England. It is a disgraceful book. Not in French schools only, but at Berlin, Vienna, Leipsic, and Florence under the notorious Dr. Schiff, and alas ! now in England, Scotland, and America, these torture-dens, called physiological laboratories, are multiplied. Hundreds of thousands of experiments have been performed, all under the plea of the advancement of science. Science, forsooth ! M. Nelaton, a surgeon in Paris as eminent as Syme and Fergusson with us, had the wisdom and courage to
88
denounce the proceedings of vivisectors as opposed to true science ; and, professing to belong to the pre–scientific school, declared that every attempt to acquire knowledge is futile and delusive when not derived from direct observation, through clinical and pathological study.
I once asked Sir J. Risdon Bennett, a physician and teacher of long experience (among whose pupils was Dr. Livingstone) and who near the close of his life was repeatedly elected President of the Royal College of Physicians, why he could allow his name to appear as sanctioning such a vile system as vivisection. His reply was, "I never witnessed a vivisection experiment in my life, but my friend, Pye Smith, of Guy's, says we must not oppose scientific research !" Sir Thomas Watson, a former President of the College, and for more than fifty years a leader in the profession, also admitted that he had never witnessed a vivisection experiment. I believe the same may be said of other veterans of the profession, who have given their names to shield the experimenters. At the Church Congress at Folkestone, a meeting was allotted to this subject—a very discreditable proceeding, since Archdeacon Emery's Committee of Selection knew there was no medical or surgical man present to state the facts opposed to the assertions of Professor Victor Horsley. The simple clerical auditors did not know that the speaker owed his reputation to his skill and daring in surgery, good instruments, Lister's antiseptic treatment, and the vis medicatrix naturæ. Vivisection has had no more to do with his success than it had with the skill of Dr. Bell Taylor, of Nottingham, as an oculist, or the experience of Sir James Paget as a physician.
Allowing that all vivisectors are actuated by ardent zeal for science, and that all of them are honourable and humane men, as we know Sir J. Erichson, the Chief Inspector to be, how can the details of licensed laboratories be known, and what superintendence can be exercised over experiments made by students or practitioners in private or in unregistered places ?
I wrote to my old master, Dr. Christison, asking his opinion, and in his reply he said, "I object to all public demonstrations by experiment on living animals, and have always done so. I admit that students ought to be discouraged in repeating experiments already so sufficiently carried out as to convey all the information of value which they are capable of supplying." Dr. Christison added that he hesitated to express his opinions more decidedly, as experiments "might be useful in toxicology." In this department the highest English authority, the late Alfred Taylor, of Guy's, has left on record his strongest protest against any reliance being put on experiments on the lower animals. Opium has been given to a pigeon without any effect, in quantity that would kill a strong man. Goats have been seen to browse on tobacco leaves, and rabbits on belladonna, without harm. Many such anomalies have been recorded by Mr. Berdoe and others, as may be seen in Mr. Bryan's book ; and the only certain knowledge of the effect of poisons must be ascertained by observation of cases in private or hospital practice. One writer has cited the discovery of chloroform among the blessed results of experiment ! He was ignorant of the fact that the experiments in this instance were performed by Dr. J. Y. Simpson and Dr. Keith on their own persons, as they have told in their graphic narrative.
A letter from the Queen to Lord Harrowby, as President of the R.S.P.C.A. in Jermyn Street, dated June 19th, 1874, gave great satisfaction to all advocates of the merciful treatment of animals. In this letter it was said, "The Queen hears and reads with horror of the sufferings which the brute creation often undergo from the thoughtlessness of the ignorant, and she fears also sometimes from experiments in the pursuit of science. For the removal of the former the Queen trusts much to the progress of education ; and in regard to the pursuit of science, she hopes that the entire advantage of those anæsthetic discoveries from which man has derived so much benefit himself, in the alleviation of suffering, may be fully extended to the lower animals."
On this latter point it is surely unworthy conduct on the part of courtly physicians to have withheld from Her Majesty the fact of the trifling initial relief from pain due to anæsthetics, and the fact moreover that in thousands of the so–called "scientific experiments" the use of chloroform vitiates the results.
Unhappily some friends of vivisection have got the ear of the Times and other newspapers, and abuse this influence by getting articles occasionally inserted in
89
favour of experimenting, and often suppressing the decisive testimonies on the other side. But this concealment and deception cannot be kept up indefinitely.
It is pleasant to turn to the other part of our good Queen's letter, where she hopes that the sufferings now caused by the thoughtlessness of the ignorant may be much lessened by the progress of education. From the earliest years, whether at home or in schools, kindness to animals should be taught ; a mother or teacher can never be at a loss for methods of impressing the minds of the young with tender feeling and gentle treatment of animals. In an early report of the schools in the Borough Road, London, when Mr. Lancaster was head master, it is stated that of 7,000 boys not one had ever been charged with a criminal charge in any Court. Mr. Lancaster ascribed this to the fact that kindness to animals was specially taught and inculcated in the school. Many testimonies of a similar nature have been given, and it is to be desired that in the National and Board schools of our time this special training should be regarded. In the training schools for masters and mistresses this ought to be attended to, even if displacing a small portion of the mere intellectual forcing and "cramming" in useless knowledge. The press teems with publications suitable to be helps in this moral training. Messrs George Bell and Sons have just issued a series of "Animal Life Readers" for the standards of elementary schools, prepared by Miss Edith Carrington. The books of the Rev. F. O. Morris, of Nunburnholme, "the Selborne of the North," are prepared for such use. In the volumes of the Leisure Hour for many years there were anecdotes and stories contributed by Frank Buckland, J. K. Lord, and other eminent naturalists. From these a delightful book could be prepared by any one with sufficient intelligence for selection. A volume of this kind has lately been issued by Mr. Fisher Unwin, containing anecdotes from the Spectator, "Dog stories, showing the instincts, reasoning power, affection, and sympathy of these faithful friends of man." For Scottish schools there should be
90
a reading book, with the wonderful anecdotes told by James Hogg, "the Ettrick Shepherd," and Sir Walter Scott, and John Wilson, and the author of "Rab and his Friends," Dr. Guthrie, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others. It would be well, also, to have a selection of pictures by Landseer, Wolff, Harrison Weir, and many others—for all artists are friends of humanity, and detest the "cruelties perpetrated under the pretext of science," as strongly as Sir Walter Scott, who used these weighty words. In former days Hogarth, a shrewd observer of character, in publishing "The Four Stages of Cruelty," thus wrote :—"The leading points in these prints were made as obvious as possible, in the hope that their tendency might be seen in men of the lowest rank. In expressing them as I felt them I have paid the utmost attention, and as they were addressed to hard hearts, have rather preferred leaving them hard to rendering them feeble by fine strokes and soft engraving. The prints were engraved with the hope of, in some degree, correcting the barbarous treatment of animals. If they have this effect, and check the progress of cruelty, I am more proud of having been the author than I should be of having painted Raphael's cartoons."
Miss F. P. Cobbe has lately discovered a new advocate for vivisection. Father Rickaby, S.J., whose "Moral Philosophy" is the text-book at Stonyhurst College, maintains that brute beasts, not having understanding, and therefore not being persons, but things, cannot have any rights. "In all that conduces to the sustenance of man we may give pain to brutes, as also in the pursuit of science. Nor are we bound to any anxious care to make this pain as little as may be. Brutes are things in our regard." The whole of Father Rickaby's argument is deplorable, but we have space only to speak of the Jesuitical division of living sentient creatures into persons and things—persons having rights, and things having no rights ! The Provincial Letters of Pascal have made us familiar with the miserable casuistry of the Schools of Suarez, and Escobar, and other members of the Jesuit Order. "Morality" of this sort may be approved at Maynooth and Stonyhurst ; but men of higher principle, whether Catholics or Protestants, have other ideas concerning rights and duties. Lord Bacon (De augmet, Scient., Book VIII. c. 2) says : "There is implanted in the heart of man by Nature an excellent affection of mercy, extending even to the brute animals, which, by the Divine appointment, are subjected to man's dominion. This, moreover, we may be assured of, that the more noble the mind, the more enlarged is this affection." Nor is Father Rickaby likely to have ever heard of Lord Erskine, who, in trying to induce the Government of his day to legislate for the protection of animals, said, "The dominion of man over the lower world is a moral trust—a proposition which no man can deny without denying the whole foundation of our duties."
The books of Holy Scripture are full of lessons and precepts of mercy and kindness to animals. Dr. Chalmers preached a most eloquent sermon on the subject, showing that the duty of humanity to animals is to be regarded as a Christian virtue of the highest order. "Had there been no current of love and benevolence from above, what would have become of ourselves ? Our Saviour came down from heaven's heights to our lowly platform for the purpose of an example, as well as for the purpose of an expiation, that every Christian might extend his compassionate regards over the whole of sentient and suffering nature."
In the same spirit as this noble appeal of Chalmers are the words of a distinguished man of science, Dr. George Wilson. "There is an example as well as a lesson for us in the Saviour's compassion for men. Inasmuch as we partake with the lower animals of bodies exquisitely sensitive to pain, and often agonized by it, we should be slow to torture creatures who, though not sharers of our higher mental joys, can equal us in bodily suffering. We stand, by Divine appointment, between God and them, and are as gods unto them. . . We shall be worse even than the forgiven debtor, in the parable, who shewed no mercy to his fellow, if we wrong servants who have excelled us in faithfulness, or fail in compassion for the dumb creatures of God which He has committed to our care."
Footnotes
* The first part of this article appeared in our January number, with a portrait of the author. [back]
| | |
