COLUMBIA LIBRARIES OFFSITE HEALTH SCIENCES STANDARD HX64099679 QP45 .Ow2 Experimental physiol RECAP aptj" 0^v^ // / /f V/ EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY ITS BENEFITS TO MANKIND WITH AN ADDRESS ON UNVEILING THE STATUE OF WILLIAM HARVEY AT FOLKESTONE, 6th AUGUST 1881 BY RICHARD OWEN, C.B., M.D., F.R.S., &c. FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE ' Common sense is of slow growth in a community ; but there seems ever to be a floating capital of compassionate credulity, offering a tempting field to the venal knave for raising and garnering a harvest of subscriptions ' — Lacon LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1882 All rights resented vv ^ MOTIVE. On the 28th of March in the present year a Meeting was held at the Royal College of Physicians in London, at which, among others, were present, Sir William Jenner, Bart, M.D., F.R.S., in the chair. Sir Wil- liam Gull, Bart, M.D., F.R.S., Sir James Paget, Bart, F.R.S., and other eminent physicians and surgeons, the object being to * bring the legitimate influence of the medical profession more effectually to bear on the promotion of those exact researches in Physiology, Pathology, and Therapeutics, which are essential to sound progress in the healing art/ An Expert in matters of evidence was VI present in the person of the Master of the Rolls, who, speaking as one of the outside public, cordially supported the motion for establishing an ** Association for the Ad- vancement of Medicine by Research " * ; and His Honour remarked * that it would be most desirable that the public should be informed upon the matters contemplated by the Association.' ^ To fulfil in some degree this desire is the aim of the present publication. ^ See Report in Daz/y News, March 29, 1882. CONTENTS. PAGE 1. Introduction i 2. Address lo 3. Nomenclature , . . . . . .51 4. CUVIER . . . , 60 5. Applications of Vivisection .... 68 6. Abdominal Surgery 70 7. Antiseptic Treatment . . , . .81 8. Toothache . . . . . . , . 102 9. Fevers 105 10. The Pulse 109, 157, 159 11. Nervous Diseases . ... . , .in 12. Bestiarian Replies 127 13. Repudiation of Harvey . . . ,127 14. Repudiation of Hunter . . . . . i6a 15. New Medicines and Relief of Symptoms . 175 16. Vivipuncture 181 17. Use and Abuse of Poisons .... 200 18. Prosecution of, and Excitements to mob, Physiologists 211 EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY. I. Introduction. — The labours of the * Com- mission on the Health of Towns ' being com- pleted, and the ' Final Report ' sent in (1845)/ a second ' Commission on the Health of the Metropolis' was appointed (1846), of which I was also a member. In the course of this duty I inspected and reported on the condition of some of the worst-lodged populations in the most crowded and unsanitary localities of London, of which those in and about Drury Lane and the Seven Dials were types. In exploring certain courts and alleys it was deemed advisable to be accompanied by a member of the Metropolitan Police. The character and condition of the in- ^ 'Final Report,' p. 71. B habitants recalled those of the mobs excited in the preceding century by the speeches of the notorious Lord George Gordon. But a redeeming feature was the grateful sense expressed, especially by the poor females, of the kindness and benefits they had received from members of the medical profession who had penetrated to their repellent abodes in charitable applications of healing knowledge, * You needn't be afear'd, sir, of coming amongst us to better our lodgings/ Dally routes to official duties subsequently led through the above named localities ; and I was one day struck by observing knots of the populace, with whose appearance previous Inspections had made me familiar, staring at placards of coarse depictions. In flaring colours, purporting to represent the tortures Inflicted by medical experimentalists. Here was a knot pushing to get a sight of the ' Doctors cutting up your dog alive ; * there, the * Doctors baking your cat alive ; ' in the next street a third placard showed the * Doctors driving nails into guinea-pigs ; * a fourth, the ' Doctors gouging frogs,' &c. These mendacious daubs had been pla- carded In numbers along the worst and most excitable localities of Long Acre, and others to the west of Lincoln's Inn Fields. I was loth to tarry too long lest I might be re- cognised as one of the class against which the Ignorance and brutality of the gazers were so striven to be excited. The scene forcibly recalled the methods adopted by anonymous scoundrels at the worst periods of Roman history, in order to stir up the passions of their mobs against the early Christians. Caricatures of what were assumed or alleged to take place at the obscure places of Christian devotion and Sacramental fellowship were similarly placarded about the low populous streets of Rome, and the passions so excited Issued in the cry of * Christians to the lions,' with consequent scenes in the Amphitheatre, and were gratified by Nero's ' vivicremations.' If the persons of the best known and ablest of metropolitan physicians and sur- geons had been mobbed, and their residences sacked, the aims of the antl-vlvlsectlonal B2 placarders would have been fulfilled, and the scenes of the Gordon Riots repeated. The subventioners of the artists and bill-stickers may have been encouraged by that precedent. Such aim, however, failed ; and chiefly through the grateful memory amongst the women, wives and mothers, of the comfort and relief afforded in their repulsive abodes by the libelled healers. I was not, at that period, cognisant of the outcry endeavoured to be raised against the vivisectional methods of advancing phy- siological science with consequent augmenta- tion of the powers of recognising and treating the ' ills that flesh is heir to.' I had ceased to practice ; but, as a practitioner, I was conscious of many weak points in medical knowledge. Subsequent exclusive devotion to more purely scientific work, and, in the Hunterian Museum, to physiology, had im- pressed me with the paramount necessity of such experiments as Harvey and Hunter had had recourse to when face to face with vital phenomena and problems otherwise incomprehensible and insoluble. It was with grief and astonishment, there- fore, that I learnt the decision of the Legis- lature, amounting almost to prohibition of vivisection, based upon the Report of a Commission, the evidence before which, with comments by eminent professionals, bore chiefly, if not exclusively, on allegations of Continental vivisections which no Act of our own Parliament could reach. With, if possible, greater pain and sur- prise, I read the following * Report ' : — * The Vivisection of Animals. — The annual meet- ing of the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection was held on Saturday afternoon, by invitation of Lord Coleridge and Miss Coleridge, at his Lordship's residence. No. i Sus- sex Square, Hyde Park, the attendance being nu- merous. Among those present were Lord Talbot de Malahide, Cardinal Manning, Lord Mount-Temple, Mr. Lewis Morris, General Colin Mackenzie, M