[A] The contradictory opinions ascribed to most of the authorities quoted in this article are taken directly from the "Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes,"--a Blue-Book Parliamentary Report.
Dr. Carpenter would doubtless repeat his opinion that "frogs have extremely little perception of pain;" and in the evidence of that experienced physiologist George Henry Lewes, he would find the cheerful a.s.surance, "I do not believe that frogs suffer pain at all."
Our friend applies, let us suppose, to Dr. Klein, of St. Bartholomew"s Hospital, who despises the sentimentality which regards animal suffering as of the least consequence; and this enthusiastic vivisector informs him that, in his English experience, the experiment which caused the greatest pain without anaesthetics was the cauterization of the cornea of a frog. Somewhat confused at finding that a most painful experiment can be performed upon an animal that does not suffer he relates this to Dr. Swaine Taylor, of Guy"s Hospital, who does not think that Klein"s experiment would cause severe suffering; but of another--placing a frog in cold water and raising the temperature to about 100--"that," says Doctor Taylor, "would be a cruel experiment: I cannot see what purpose it can answer." Before leaving Guy"s Hospital, our inquiring friend meets Dr.
Pavy, one of the most celebrated physiologists in England, who tells him that in this experiment, stigmatized by his colleague as "cruel,"
the frog would in reality suffer very little; that if we ourselves were treated to a bath gradually raised from a medium temperature to the boiling point, "I think we should not feel any pain;" that were we plunged at once into boiling water, "even then," says the enthusiastic and scientific Dr. Pavy, "I do not think pain would be experienced!"
Our friend goes then to Dr. Sibson, of St. Mary"s Hospital, who as a physiologist of many years" standing, sees no objection to freezing, starving, or baking animals alive; but he declares of boiling a frog, "That is a horrible idea, and I certainly am not going to defend it."
Perplexed more than ever, he goes to Dr. Lister, of King"s College, and is astonished upon being told "that the mere holding of a frog in your warm hand is about as painful as any experiment probably that you would perform." Finally, one of the strongest advocates of vivisections, Dr. Anthony, pupil of Sir Charles Bell, would exclaim, if a mere 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_.
Let us interrogate scientific opinion a little further on this question of sensibility. Is there any difference in animals as regards susceptibility to pain? Dr. Anthony says that we may take the amount of intelligence in animals as a fair measure of their sensibility--that the pain one would suffer would be in proportion to its intelligence. Dr. Rutherford, Edinburgh, never performs an experiment upon a cat or a spaniel if he can help it, because they are so exceedingly sensitive; and Dr. Horatio Wood, of Philadelphia, tells us that the nervous system of a cat is far more sensitive than that of the rabbit. On the other hand, Dr. Lister, of King"s College, is not aware of any such difference in sensibility in animals, and Dr.
Brunton, of St. Bartholomew"s, finds cats such very good animals to operate with that he on one occasion used ninety in making a single experiment.
Sir William Gull thinks "there are but few experiments performed on living creatures where sensation is not removed," yet Dr. Rutherford admits "about half" his experiments to have been made upon animals sensitive to pain. Professor Rolleston, of Oxford University, tells us "the whole question of anaesthetizing animals has an element of uncertainty"; and Professor Rutherford declares it "impossible to say"
whether even artificial respiration is painful or not, "unless the animal can speak." Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew"s, says of that most painful experiment, poisoning by strychnine, that it cannot be efficiently shown if the animal be under chloroform. Dr. Davy, of Guy"s, on the contrary, always gives chloroform, and finds it no impediment to successful demonstration, Is opium an anaesthetic? Claude Bernard declares that sensibility exists even though the animal be motionless: "_Il sent la douleur, mais il a, pour ainsi dire, perdu l"idee de la defense._"[A] But Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew"s hospital, London, has no hesitation whatever in contradicting this statement "emphatically, however high an authority it may be."
Curare, a poison invented by South American Indians for their arrows, is much used in physiological laboratories to paralyze the motor nerves, rendering an animal absolutely incapable of the slightest disturbing movement. Does it at the same time destroy sensation, or is the creature conscious of every pang? Claude Bernard, of Paris, Sharpey, of London, and Flint, of New York[B] all agree that sensation is _not_ abolished; on the other hand, Rutherford regards curare as a partial anaesthetic, and Huxley strongly intimates that Bernard in thus deciding from experiments that it does not affect the cerebral hemispheres or consciousness, "_jumped at a conclusion_ for which neither he nor anybody else had any scientific justification." This is extraordinary language for one experimentalist to use regarding others! 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"?
[A] "He feels the pain, but has lost, so to speak, the idea of self defense." Lecons de Physiologie operatoire, 1879, p.
115.
[B] Text-Book of Human Physiology, p. 595.
II. Between advocating State supervision of painful vivisection, and proposing with Mr. Bergh the total suppression of all experiments, painful or otherwise, there is manifestly a very wide distinction.
Unfortunately, the suggestion of any interference whatever invariably rouses the anger of those most interested--an indignation as unreasonable, to say the least, as that of the merchant who refuses a receipt for money just paid to him, on the ground that a request for a written acknowledgement is a reflection upon his honesty. I cannot see how otherwise than by State supervision we are to reach abuses which confessedly exist. Can we trust the sensitiveness and conscience of every experimenter? n.o.body claims this. One of the leading physiologists in this country, Dr. John C. Dalton, admits "that vivisection may be, and has been, abused by reckless, unfeeling, or unskillful persons;" that he himself has witnessed abroad, in a veterinary inst.i.tution, operations than which "nothing could be more shocking." And yet the unspeakable atrocities at Alfort, to which, apparently, Dr. Dalton alludes, were defended upon the very ground he occupies to-day in advocating experiments of the modern laboratory and cla.s.sroom; for the Academie des Sciences decided that there was "no occasion to take any notice of complaints; that in the future, as in the past, vivisectional experiments must be left entirely to the judgment of scientific men." What seemed "atrocious" to the more tender-hearted Anglo-Saxon was p.r.o.nounced entirely justifiable by the French Academy of Science.
A curious question suggests itself in connection with this point.
There can be little doubt, I think, that the sentiment of compa.s.sion and of sympathy with suffering is more generally diffused among all cla.s.ses of Great Britain than elsewhere in Europe; and one cannot help wondering what our place might be, were it possible to inst.i.tute any reliable comparison of national humanity. Should we be found in all respects as sensitive as the English people? Would indignation and protest be as quickly and spontaneously evoked among us by a cruel act? The question may appear an ungracious one, yet it seems to me there exists some reason why it should be plainly asked. There is a certain experiment--one of the most excruciating that can be performed--which consists in exposing the spinal cord of the dog for the purpose of demonstrating the functions of the spinal nerves. It is one, by the way, which Dr. Wilder forgot to enumerate in his summary of the "four kinds of experiments," since it is not the "cutting operation" which forms its chief peculiarity or to which special objection would be made. At present all this preliminary process is generally performed under anaesthetics: it is an hour or two later, when the animal has partly recovered from the severe shock of the operation, that the wound is reopened and the experiment begins. It was during a cla.s.s demonstration of this kind by Magendie, before the introduction of ether, that the circ.u.mstance occurred which one hesitates to think possible in a person retaining a single spark of humanity or pity. "I recall to mind," says Dr. Latour, who was present at the time, "a poor dog, the roots of whose vertebral nerves Magendie desired to lay bare to demonstrate Bell"s theory, which he claimed as his own. The dog, mutilated and bleeding twice escaped from under the implacable knife, and threw its front paws around Magendie"s neck, licking, as if to soften his murderer and ask for mercy! I confess I was unable to endure that heartrending spectacle."
It was probably in reference to this experiment that Sir Charles Bell, the greatest English physiologist of our century, writing to his brother in 1822, informs him that he hesitates to go on with his investigations. "You may think me silly," he adds, "but I cannot perfectly convince myself that I am authorized in nature or religion to do these cruelties." Now, what do English physiologists and vivisectors of the present day think of the repet.i.tion of this experiment solely as a cla.s.s demonstration?
They have candidly expressed their opinions before a royal commission.
Dr. David Ferrier, of King"s college, noted for his experiments upon the brain of monkeys, affirms his belief that "students would rebel"
at the sight of a painful experiment. Dr. Rutherford, who certainly dared do all that may become a physiologist, confesses mournfully, "_I dare not_ show an experiment upon a dog or rabbit before students, when the animal is not anaesthetized." Dr. Pavy, of Guy"s Hospital, a.s.serts that a painful experiment introduced before a cla.s.s "would not be tolerated for a moment." Sir William Gull, M. D., believes that the repet.i.tion of an operation like this upon the spinal nerves would excite the reprobation alike of teacher, pupils, and the public at large. Michael Foster, of Cambridge University, who minutely describes all the details of the experiment on recurrent sensibility in the "Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory," nevertheless tells us, "I have not performed it, and have never seen it done," partly, as he confesses, "from horror at the pain." And finally Dr.
Burdon-Sanderson, physiologist at University College, London, states with the utmost emphasis, in regard to the performance of this demonstration on the spinal cord, "I am perfectly certain that no physiologist--none of the leading men in Germany, for example--would exhibit an experiment of that kind."
Now mark the contrast. This experiment--which we are told pa.s.ses even the callousness of Germany to repeat; which every leading champion of vivisection in Great Britain reprobates for medical teaching; which some of them shrink even from seeing, themselves, from horror at the tortures necessarily inflicted; which the most ruthless among them _dare not_ exhibit to the young men of England,--_this experiment has been performed publicly again and again in American medical colleges_, without exciting, so far as we know, even a whisper of protest or the faintest murmur of remonstrance! The proof is to be found in the published statements of the experimenter himself. In his "Text-Book of Physiology," Professor Flint says, "Magendie showed very satisfactorily that the posterior roots (of the spinal cord) were exclusively sensory, and this fact has been confirmed by more recent observations upon the higher cla.s.ses of animals. We have ourselves frequently exposed and irritated the roots of the nerves in dogs, _in public demonstrations_ in experiments on the recurrent sensibility, ... and in another series of observations."[A]
[A] "A Text-Book of Human Physiology." By Austin Flint, Jr.
M. D. New York, 1876. Page 589; see also page 674.
This is the experience of a single professional teacher; but it is improbable that this experiment has been shown only to the students of a single medical college in the United States; it has doubtless been repeated again and again in different colleges throughout the country.
If Englishmen are, then, so extremely sensitive as Ferrier, Gull, and Burdon-Sanderson would have us believe, we must necessarily conclude that the sentiment of compa.s.sion is far greater in Britain than in America. Have we drifted backward in humanity? Have American students learned to witness, without protest, tortures at the sight of which English students would rebel? We are told that there is no need of any public sensitiveness on this subject. We should trust entirely, as they do in France,--at Alfort, for example,--"to the judgment of the investigator." There must be no lifting of the veil to the outside mult.i.tude; for the priests of this unpitying science there must be as absolute immunity from criticism or inquiry as was ever demanded before the shrine of Delphi or the altars of Baal. "Let them exercise their solemn office," demands Dr. Wilder, "not only unrestrained by law, but upheld by public sentiment."
For myself, I cannot believe this position is tenable. Nothing seems to me more certain than the results that must follow if popular sentiment in this country shall knowingly sustain the public demonstration of an experiments in pain, which can find no defender among the physiologists of Great Britain. It has been my fortune to know something of the large hospitals of Europe; and I confess I do not know a single one in countries where painful vivisection flourishes, unchecked by law, wherein the poor and needy sick are treated with the sympathy, the delicacy, or even the decency, which so universally characterize the hospitals of England. When Magendie, operating for cataract, plunged his needle to the bottom of his patient"s eye, that he might note upon a human being the effect produced by mechanical irritation of the retina, he demonstrated how greatly the zeal of the enthusiast may impair the responsibility of the physician and the sympathy of man for man.
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 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? An English prelate, the Bishop of Peterborough, speaking in Parliament on this subject, once told the House of Lords that "it was very difficult to decide what was unnecessary pain," and as an example of the perplexities which arose in his own mind he mentioned "the case of the wretched man who was convicted of skinning cats alive, because their skins were more valuable when taken from the living animal than from the dead one. The extra money," added the Bishop, "got the man a dinner!"[A] Whether in this particular case the excuse was well received by the judge, the reverend prelate neglected to inform us; but it is certain that the plea for painful experimentation rests substantially on the same basis. Out of the agonies of sentient brutes we are to pluck the secret of longer living and the art of surer triumph over intractable disease.
[A] See Hansard"s Parliamentary Debates, June 20, 1876.
But has this hope been fulfilled? Pasteur, we are told, has claimed the discovery of a cure for hydrophobia through experiments on animals. It may be well worth its cost if only true; but we cannot forget that its practical value is by no means yet demonstrated. Aside from this, has physiological experimentation during the last quarter of a century contributed such marked improvements in therapeutic methods that we find certain and tangible evidence thereof in the diminishing fatality of any disease? Can one mention a single malady which thirty years ago resisted every remedial effort, to which the more enlightened science of to-day can offer hopes of recovery? These seem to me perfectly legitimate and fair questions, and, fortunately, in one respect, capable of a scientific reply. I suppose the opinion of the late Claude Bernard, of Paris, would be generally accepted as that of the highest scientific authority on the utility of vivisection in "practical medicine;" but he tells us that it is hardly worth while to make the inquiry. "Without doubt," he confessed, "_our hands are empty to-day_, although our mouths are full of legitimate promises for the future."
Was Claude Bernard correct in this opinion as to the "empty hands?"
If scientific evidence is worth anything, it points to the appalling conclusion that, _notwithstanding all the researches of physiology, the chief forms of chronic disease exhibit to-day in England a greater fatality than thirty years ago_. In the following table I have indicated the average annual mortality, per million inhabitants, of certain diseases, _first_, for the period of five years from 1850 to 1854, and _secondly_, for the period twenty-five years later, from 1875 to 1879. The authority is beyond question; the facts are collected from the report to Parliament of the Registrar-general of England:
_Average Annual Rate of Mortality in England, from Causes of Death, per One Million Inhabitants._
----------------------------------+---------------+--------------- | During | During NAME OF DISEASE. | Five Years, | Five Years, | 1850-54. | 1875-79.
----------------------------------+---------------+--------------- Gout, | 12 | 25 Aneurism, | 16 | 32 Diabetes, | 23 | 41 Insanity, | 29 | 57 Syphilis, | 37 | 86 Epilepsy, | 105 | 119 Bright"s disease, | 32 | 182 Kidney disease, | 94 | 114 Brain disease, | 192 | 281 Liver disease, | 215 | 291 Heart disease, | 651 | 1,335 Cancer, | 302 | 492 Paralysis, | 440 | 501 Apoplexy, | 454 | 552 Tubercular diseases and diseases | | of the Respiratory Organs, | 6,424 | 6,886 ----------------------------------+---------------+--------------- Mortality from above diseases: | 9,026 | 10,994 ----------------------------------+---------------+---------------
This is certainly a most startling exhibit, when we remember that from only these few causes about half of _all_ the deaths in England annually occur, and that from them result the deaths of two-thirds of the persons, of both s.e.xes, who reach the age of twenty years.[A] What are the effects here discernible of Bernard"s experiments upon diabetes? of Brown-Sequard"s upon epilepsy and paralysis? of Flint"s and Pavy"s on diseases of the liver? of Ferrier"s researches upon the functions of the brain? Let us appeal from the heated enthusiasm of the experimenter to the stern facts of the statistician. Why, so far from having obtained the least mastery over those malignant forces which seem forever to elude and baffle our art, they are actually gaining upon us; every one of these forms of disease is more fatal to-day in England than thirty years ago; during 1879 over sixty thousand _more_ deaths resulted from these maladies alone than would have occurred had the rate of mortality from them been simply that which prevailed during the benighted period of 1850 to 1854! True, during later years there has been a diminished mortality in England, but it is from the lesser prevalence of zymotic diseases, which no one to-day pretends to cure; while the organic diseases show a constant tendency to increase. Part of this may be due to more accurate diagnosis and clearer definition of mortality causes: but this will not explain a phenomenon which is too evident to be overlooked.
[A] In 1879 the total mortality in England, above the age of twenty, from _all causes_ whatsoever, was 287,093. Of these deaths, the number occasioned by the sixteen causes above named, was 191,706, or almost exactly two-thirds.
"It is a fact," says the Registrar-general, in his report for 1879, "that while mortality in early life has been very notably diminished, _the mortality of persons in middle or advanced life has been steadily rising for a long period of years_." It is probable that the same story would be told by the records of France, Germany, and other European countries; it is useless, of course, to refer to America, since in regard to statistical information we still lag behind every country which pretends to be civilized.[A] Undoubtedly it would be a false a.s.sumption which from these facts should deduce retrogression in medical art or deny advance and improvement; but they certainly indicate that the boasted superiority of modern medicine over the skill of our fathers, due to physiological researches, is not sustained by the only impartial authority to which science can appeal for evidence of results.
[A] Even j.a.pan, a country we are apt to consider as somewhat benighted, has far better statistical information at hand than the United States of America.
What then is the substance of the whole matter? It seems to me the following conclusions are justified by the facts presented.
I. All experiments upon living animals may be divided into two general cla.s.ses; 1st those which produce pain,--slight, brief, severe or atrociously acute and prolonged; and 2nd, those experiments which are performed under complete anaesthesia from which either death ensues during unconsciousness, or entire recovery may follow.
II. The majority of vivisections requisite for purposes of teaching physiological facts _may_ be so carried on as to take life with less pain or inconvenience to the animal than is absolutely necessary in order to furnish meat for our tables. Those who would make it a penal offense to submit to a cla.s.s of college students the unconscious and painless demonstration of functional activity of the heart, for example, and yet demand for the gratification of appet.i.te the daily slaughter of oxen and sheep without anaesthetics, and without any attempt to minimize the agony of terror, fear and pain--may not be inconsistent. But it is a view the writer cannot share.
III. Prohibition of all experiments may be fairly demanded by those who believe that the enthusiastic ardor of the scientific experimenter or lecturer, will outweigh all considerations of good faith, provided success or failure of his experiment depend on the consciousness of pain. In other words, that the experimenter himself, as a rule, _cannot be trusted to obey the law, should the law restrict_.
This also is an extreme position.
IV. Absolute liberty in the matter of painful experiments has produced admitted abuses by physiologists of Germany, France and Italy. In America it has led to the repet.i.tion before cla.s.ses of students of Magendie"s extreme cruelties,--demonstrations which have been condemned by every leading English physiologist.
V. In view of the dangerous impulses not unfrequently awakened by the sight of pain intentionally inflicted, experiments of this kind should be by legal enactment absolutely forbidden before cla.s.ses of students, especially in our Public Schools.
VI. It is not in accord with scientific accuracy to contend for unlimited freedom of painful experimentation, on the ground of its vast utility to humanity in the discovery of new methods for the cure of disease. On the contrary, so far as can be discovered by a careful study of English mortality statistics, physiological experiments upon living animals for fifty years back have in no single instance lessened the fatality of any disease below its average of thirty-five years ago.
VII. Vivisection, involving the infliction of pain is, even in its best possible aspect, a necessary evil, and ought at once to be restricted within the narrowest limits, and placed under the supervision of the State.
APPENDIX.
I.
For reasons sufficiently stated in the preceding pages, the writer does not advocate the total abolition of all experimentation. It is only fair to acknowledge, however, that very strong and weighty arguments in favor of legal repression have been advanced both in this country and abroad, some of which are herewith presented, as the other side of the question.