Humanity Against Cruelty to Animals in Historical Literature, Timeline of Animal Rights History

Animal Rights History »» Dr. Lawson Tait

1896 | Why I Oppose Vivisection

Dr. Tait in "Why I Oppose Vivisection" maintains that "no great advance in medicine or surgery has been made which could not have been gained by clinical observation." In this article, he illustrates "the uselessness and the positive danger of experiments on animals" from personal observations and experience.

IT is now nearly a quarter of a century since I was startled into a review of my own work on the surgery of the arteries, and led to the humiliating recognition of the fact that the conclusions obtained from a series of experiments on animals could not be applied to man, and that our efforts to adapt them were leading us into serious surgical blunders. An extended investigation into which I was further attracted by the rising discussion of this question forced upon me the opinion that Syme and Fergusson were right when they stoutly asserted that surgery had in no way been advanced by experiments on animals. (Dr. Lawson Tait, "Why I Oppose Vivisection," Animals' Friend Magazine [1896-Aug])

It seems to me a rank disredit that we have to plead a necessity for vivisection in any case. It is so transparently unscientific, that is inexact. Let my brethren bear in mind that this method of research after knowledge, be it useful or be it useless, stands absolutely alone in being objectionable to every one. Not the astronomer, nor the chemist, nor the physicist, nor any one else among scientific men has had to defend or excuse any one of his methods of research. (Dr. Lawson Tait, "Why I Oppose Vivisection," Animals' Friend Magazine [1896-Aug])

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1896-Aug | Dr. Lawson Tait, "Why I Oppose Vivisection, no. XIII," Animals' Friend (London:1884-?) 2 (1896 Aug): 185-189. [Online at Animal Rights History, 2003]

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