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 http://www.archive.org/details/vivisectionquestOOhodg 
 
Reprinted from Appletona' Popular Science Monthly 
 for September and October, 1896. 
 
 
 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 By 0. F. HODGE, Ph. D., 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHTSIOLOGT, OLAEK UNIVERSITY. 
 
 I.— INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 FOR about thirty years the vivisection question has been before 
 the public in this country. Discussion has often been hot and 
 bitter, both in the press and in society, and again it is upon us in 
 exactly its old form. What are we to do with it ? What, so far 
 as this country is concerned, has the controversy accomplished ? 
 After careful reading of all the important literature upon both 
 sides, it appears to me that nothing has been gained either way. 
 Both sides are practically where they were thirty years ago, and 
 the failure seems to be due to fundamental misunderstandings of 
 the real points at issue. In several hundred antivivisection pub- 
 lications I am unable to find a passage which reveals the least 
 conception on the part of their writers of the real purpose which 
 a physiologist has in his work. On the other side, while definite 
 arguments have been advanced, no generous effort has been made 
 to give the public a clear notion of what the physiologist in the 
 study of health and the pathologist in the study of disease are 
 driving at. Can something be said which shall do this ? Or 
 must physiologists work on under the distrust and suspicion of 
 society because their aims and purposes are misunderstood ? 
 
 The real question at issue, moreover, has been buried under 
 personalities and under matters of detail, themselves involved in 
 bitterest possible medical controversy, and the merits of which 
 no amount of discussion, but time and experiment alone, can de- 
 termine. Only by freeing the argument entirely from these 
 things, and by placing it upon higher grounds, can we hope for 
 intelligent peace upon this contested field. What, then, is the pur- 
 pose of biological science ? 
 
 Man finds himself in company upon the earth with an infinite 
 number of living things, and he has found it of inestimable value 
 to learn something about this maze of life. The science which 
 
 COPTMGHT, 1896, BY D. APPLBTON AMD COMPASTT. 
 
2 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 has come to embody this knowledge is now known as biology. It 
 falls naturally into two great divisions : the study of the form and 
 structure of organs and organisms — anatomy or morphology — and 
 the study of the functions, of the actions, which the organs per- 
 form. This is physiology. Dividing further, physiology falls 
 into the sciences of healthy action, physiology proper, and dis- 
 eased action, pathology, from Tra^os, a suffering. It is evident 
 that for the study of form alone the dead body is in general suffi- 
 cient. But for the investigation of the activities of health and 
 disease it is as evident that the physiologist and pathologist re- 
 quire vital action as much as the chemist requires chemical action 
 or the physicist requires motion. It is continually being urged 
 that the dead body is sufficient for every scientific purpose. As 
 well say that the dead body is as good as a live man. It would 
 be precisely as reasonable to agitate against driving live horses, 
 contending that dead ones will go just as fast, as to oppose the 
 use of live animals for physiological or pathological research. 
 And those who make this claim prove conclusively that they have 
 no conception of what the word physiology means. 
 
 Of all physical Nature nothing is of greater importance or 
 touches man more closely than just this thing, life. The study of 
 form, anatomy, is little more than a dead stepping-stone to this 
 science of the processes of life, physiology. Young as it is, no sci- 
 ence has attained results of greater value and none gives brighter 
 promise for the future. In a word, the faith, hope, and charity 
 which inspire this science are to learn enough about the laws and 
 possibilities of living Nature, to do away with all disease and 
 premature death, and to make all life as full and perfect as these 
 laws will permit. This is the inspiration of biology. Is it base 
 or unworthy ? And it is not Utopian. It is possible. The end 
 may not be attained for a hundred years or a thousand. That 
 depends upon how much faith men have in it and upon how much 
 effort they are willing to devote to it. But it will come as surely 
 as the world moves. 
 
 Take for a moment a broad view of our situation in this re- 
 spect. Nearly one half of our people are dying before the age 
 of forty-one, almost all of disease, curable or preventable, did we 
 but know how. This goes on with our standing army of physi- 
 cians, over one hundred thousand strong, on duty day and night. 
 It looks discouraging, and an eminent physician has himself said 
 that a doctor is like a man blindfolded, striking about with a 
 club, almost as likely to hit his patient as the disease. Our only 
 hope, therefore, must lie in more knowledge of the laws which 
 govern living Nature. Without this, as well attempt to stay the 
 storm and tides of the ocean with straw as the currents of disease 
 and the course of Nature with doctors. If we could get before un- 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 3 
 
 prejudiced, thoughtful people some idea of the magnitude and 
 scope of medicine and its importance to human and to all animal 
 life, together with some faint conception of the moral forces im- 
 pelling to the pursuit of those sciences which underlie medicine, 
 in the light of these ideas the vivisection question would wholly 
 disappear. 
 
 More than two hundred and fifty years ago, in the town of 
 Schaifhausen, a German anatomist was engaged in studying the 
 anatomy of the human body. The people loathed him as one pos- 
 sessed of the devil. They told him, in the words of an old super- 
 stition, that the stain of human blood he could never wash from 
 his hands. His reply was, " I can wash the blood stains from my 
 hands with a basin of water, but the stain of ignorance of anatomy 
 can not be washed from the medical profession with all the water 
 of the Rhine and the ocean." * Wepf er spoke of anatomy. Anat- 
 omy must precede physiology and pathology, as the structure must 
 precede the function it is to perform. Thus Anatomy must pre- 
 pare the way for physiology, and to some extent she has fulfilled her 
 mission. But were a Wepf er to arise now, he would say, " The 
 stain of ignorance of physiology can not be washed away with all 
 the water of five oceans." I doubt, however, whether a modern 
 Wepfer would lay the burden of blame at the door of the medical 
 profession. It is everyday talk that physicians must lower their 
 practice to the ignorance and prejudice of their patients. The 
 idea of " magic " cures is still too deeply rooted in the average 
 mind, and a doctor must " dose " a large proportion of his patients 
 to satisfy this craving. At no time in the history of medicine has 
 there been such a craze for patent medicines as now, and in no 
 country is the situation so bad as in our own. We are the laugh- 
 ingstock of all Europe in this regard. In Germany apothecaries 
 are prosecuted for advertising and selling American patent medi- 
 cines. What hope, then, is there for rational medicine in a coun- 
 try that spends yearly hundreds of millions for worthless or 
 harmful " patent medicines " and quack doctors, and but a very 
 few paltry thousands for the advancement of physiology — and 
 worse still, among a people who are as completely and just as in- 
 telligently satisfied with quack nostrums as men were in the dark 
 ages with amulets and signatures, the moss scraped from a human 
 skull, the powder of dried toads, or the hair of a saint ? f In a na- 
 tion of popular rule, the only hope seems to lie in scientific educa- 
 tion of the people. How this is to be attained is a most difficult 
 problem. The people will not educate themsel ves. Against such 
 
 * Rudolf Virchow. Archiv fiir pathologische Anatomie und Physiologic, vol. clixxv. 
 p. 375, Berlin, 1881. 
 
 f George F. Fort, History of Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, London, 1888. 
 
4 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 education are naturally trained all the resources of quackery, 
 whose trade would be gone. And where free expression is accorded 
 to all alike, progress must be made in the teeth of ignorance too 
 dense to have any conception of its own depth, and in the face of 
 brawling charlatanry and screaming fanaticism. With nearly 
 half our people dying before or about the prime of life, this is the 
 situation. To teach ideas of cause and effect with reference to 
 matters of health and disease, to inspire at least a willingness to 
 heartily co-operate in efforts to control the causes of disease, our 
 public-school system seems well adapted. But even here there is 
 a serious tendency to hamper and restrict the proper teaching of 
 physiology. 
 
 II._VIVISECTION FROM THE STANDPOINT OF RELIGION AND MORALITY. 
 
 If vivisection is impious, immoral, or demoralizing, it must be 
 abandoned as a method of research, and further discussion on 
 grounds of utility is precluded. Hence this aspect of the subject 
 must receive our first attention. Scarcely a paper appears against 
 the practice of vivisection which does not contain solemn appeals 
 to the Deity. These are too sincere to be ignored. In fact, the 
 most active supporter of the agitation in England would confine 
 the discussion wholly to these grounds, and invites us to " leave, 
 then, utility alone, and all the weary controversy which hangs 
 upon it." With the help of God, it (the national conscience) will 
 yet abolish vivisection.* A recent expression of the American 
 Society is as follows : 
 
 Resolved, That we, the American Antivivisection Society, 
 believe vivisection to be morally wrong ; to be distinctly opposed 
 to the intent of a beneficent Creator, who wills the happiness of 
 all his creatures ; that we should, as Christians, unite in every 
 effort for its suppression, and, as the best weapon of the Christian 
 is prayer. Resolved,] etc. 
 
 The argument has been cast by Cardinal Manning into the 
 following syllogism: Truth of Nature must be sought only by 
 methods in harmony with the perfection of Nature^s God. Mercy 
 is one of the perfections of God. Vivisection is not in harmony 
 with perfect mercy. J Therefore truth must not be sought by 
 vivisection. How the worthy cardinal knows that vivisection is 
 not in harmony with God's perfect mercy he nowhere explains. 
 This is the all-important question. If this proposition is true, 
 vivisection is impious, and must be abandoned immediately, no 
 matter what its value to science, or utility to mankind. 
 
 * Miss F. P. Cobbe. A Charity and a Controversy, London, 1889, p. 4. 
 
 f American Antivivisection Society Report, 1892, p. 19. 
 
 X Manning. Annual Address, Victoria Street Society, March 29, 188Y. 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 5 
 
 Clearly the only way to find an answer to this question is to 
 go to Nature itself and examine the principles upon which God 
 has deemed it wise to order the living population of the world. 
 
 Doing this, we find living upon the world at present at least 
 272,090 different species of animals, the number of individuals in 
 each species being beyond computation or expression. We also 
 know that 39,925 species, with their countless numbers of indi- 
 viduals, have succumbed in the struggle for life and become 
 extinct.* 
 
 Now, it has been ordained, in the perfect mercy of God, that 
 each individual of this innumerable population be born, live for a 
 little time, and die. With many species, birth itself is painful. 
 With all, life is a continuous struggle and terminates in what is 
 commonly called "the agony of death." Few, at least of the 
 higher animals, struggle out the full measure of their days and 
 die in peace. The vast majority are starved to death, or famished 
 and scorched to death by heat and drought, buried in the burning 
 debris of volcanoes or in snows and frozen to death, or are beaten 
 to death by hail or drowned in floods. And in and through all 
 this is the desperate struggle to find a grain of food, a drop of 
 water, a little shelter, a foothold in the flood, a way out of the 
 fiery hail or burning forest. 
 
 But harsh as is the relation between animal life and the phys- 
 ical world, still more severe are the relations of animals to one 
 another. Here we see the weaker preyed on by the stronger 
 mercilessly, and behold the array of vivisectional instruments — 
 the teeth and jaws, the beaks and talons, the claws and fangs, 
 developed for this purpose. Here the animals that escape the 
 accidents of the physical world perish most miserably, are lacer- 
 ated, torn limb from limb, are slowly crushed in serpents' coils or 
 slowly swallowed alive. And again in all this is the last, prob- 
 ably of many, flight for dear life, the last convulsive effort to tear 
 loose from the teeth or talons. Certain plants, even, are carnivor- 
 ous, and entrap and digest living animals. More than all this, 
 among certain animals, the males tight to the death for possession 
 of the females of the species. 
 
 Still more terrible, many animals and plants become parasitic, 
 and suck from day to day the life-blood of their hosts. Un- 
 doubtedly the greatest distress to which the animal kingdom is 
 subjected occurs under this head. Some of the many diseases 
 producing microbes become established in the animal. The dis- 
 
 * Leunis. Synopsis der Thierkunde, vol. ii, p. 1176, Hanover, 1886. The above is 
 merely the number of species known to Leunis in 1886, and by no means the entire number 
 inhabiting the earth. Lord Walsingham estimates that there are upward of two million 
 species of insects alone. (Entomological News, April, 1890, p. 58.) 
 
6 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 ease ensues — slow, loathsome decay, sharp, convulsive torture, or 
 the burning to death of fever. 
 
 All this is going on in the sea and on the land and has been 
 going on for geological ages upon a scale which baffles expression 
 in number or quantity. And this is God's ordering of Nature in 
 "perfect mercy." With it man has had nothing to do, since 
 there is every reason to believe that it existed ages before he 
 appeared upon the scene. Cardinal Manning goes on to tell us 
 that he believes in Genesis ; but there we are told, " And God saw 
 everything that he had made : and behold, it was very good.'' 
 According to any estimate of the enormity of physical suffering 
 which I have been able to find among antivivisection writers, the 
 God who ordained such a scheme of Nature must be a monster 
 of cruelty. What is wrong with the equation ? The Creator ? 
 Nature ? Or the ideas of antivivisectionists ? Is it not true that 
 the religion of a hermit's hut, a lady's parlor, or a pope's palace 
 is apt to fit ill the problems of the wide world, and that we must 
 go to Nature to study even religion ? 
 
 This travail of the animal creation is the " Slough of Despond " 
 for every philosophy but one. The biologist would agree with the 
 Creator in pronouncing it " very good." He too has gained in 
 some degree the divine point of view, and can see that out of the 
 struggle comes the quickening to nobler form and higher life, 
 and that, without this, life of any sort is scarce worth the living. 
 
 Few who drive thoroughbreds ever pause to think of the flee- 
 ing for life, through geological epochs, the kicking and biting, the 
 hardship and training it has cost to give to the horse his beauty 
 and strength, since the time when the fox- sized Eohippus picked 
 his way among Eocene bogs. So with man, so with every form of 
 life that has attained any height of development. The price has 
 been great, but the gain is priceless ; and we would not give back, 
 if we could, all the suffering the world has felt and revert to vege- 
 tation and formless slimes. 
 
 Examining a step further, is it not possible to imagine a more 
 merciful dispensation of Nature ? Suppose all the " cruel " car- 
 nivora should be exterminated or become vegetarian. Would 
 we not then have the animal millennium of certain sentimental 
 people ? No, far from it. The ensuing year would be the most 
 dreadful in the experience of the animal kingdom upon the earth, 
 and would end in death by starvation and disease of many more 
 animals than are now annually appropriated by the carnivora. 
 But suppose all manner of disease should be done away with — the 
 millennium of scientific medicine ; the struggle for food would be 
 only the more terrible, and it is more merciful to kill in a night, 
 even by pestilence, than in a month by starvation and the kicks 
 and butts of stronger animals. 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 7 
 
 There is what is known as the " balance of natural forces." It 
 is this that keeps the planets balanced in their orbits, and among 
 animals it holds the species within the bounds which make for the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number. It is the plan of an 
 all-merciful Creator, and man has never been able to suggest an 
 improvement upon it, within the limits of physical conditions. 
 
 From the above, we see that every animal life is cast into the 
 world as an experiment, often of the severest and most painful 
 type. In this lifelong vivisection. Nature provides no ether or 
 chloroform, nor even chloral or morphine. 
 
 By this very dispensation of Nature God clearly gives to man 
 every sanction to cause any amount of physical pain which he 
 may find expedient to unravel his laws. Not only this, the situa- 
 tion places upon man heavy duties, which he is bound to perform. 
 These we will consider in a moment. As far as biological science 
 is concerned the whole argument may be summed up as follows : 
 Biology is not an exact science like mathematics and physics. 
 These sciences are exact simply because it is possible in them to 
 obtain as many equations as there are unknown quantities to be 
 determined. Hence, with the solution of all possible equations, 
 every unknown quantity in these sciences may be exactly deter- 
 mined. In biological sciences the case is thus far quite different. 
 Here the unknown quantities are legion in every equation. 
 Hence the extreme difficulty of any solid advance ; hence the 
 many mistakes, the many disagreements. In the best of experi- 
 ments it is only possible to mass one series of unknown quanti- 
 ties against another series of unknown quantities so that they 
 balance as nearly as possible, and then with our one unknown 
 quantity, about which the experiment turns, make the best tem- 
 porary solution of our problem possible. Thus the science must 
 be content to proceed until the vast series of unknown conditions 
 which influence life have been dealt with one by one. Thus, if 
 the science is to advance, if we are ever to learn under what con- 
 ditions life is most favorably pla.ced, we must vary the conditions 
 in every possible way — i. e., experiment physiologically ; and, as 
 we have seen, everything in the divine ordering of Nature is in 
 complete harmony with this method, and bids man Godspeed in 
 this great work. 
 
 Thus far we have considered Nature as uninfl.uenced by the 
 presence of man. Let man, a moral being, take his place among 
 the animal creation, and at once there spring up moral relations 
 between him and every living thing capable of feeling pleasure 
 and pain. It becomes his duty to do all in his power to increase 
 the happiness and to diminish the suffering of every sentient 
 thing. But we do not sympathize with the Hindu who lay down 
 before the starving tigress in order to save her life and the life of 
 
« THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 her whelps with his own. Man's first duty is to those of his own 
 species. If wild beasts endanger the life of his wife or child, it 
 becomes his duty to kill them by any means in his power, let the 
 suffering be what it must. This is man's first step in the con- 
 quest of any country. And .when he has rid the earth of the 
 fierce carnivora, it becomes his duty to kill such numbers of the 
 herbivora as will enable the rest to obtain food and enjoy life. 
 This surplus man has always utilized for food and clothing. All 
 this, however, is but his first step. He must tend herds and till 
 the soil to support as many as possible of his own species. Even 
 then his work is but just begun. If disease threaten the life of 
 his child, is his duty any different ? Certainly not. It is as 
 much his duty to exterminate the disease as to destroy the wild 
 beast. To subdue the earth, " and have dominion over . . . every 
 living thing that moveth upon the earth," was one of God's first 
 and highest commands to man ; and it includes microbes as well 
 as lions and tigers. 
 
 At just this point we are met with the argument that there is 
 no moral proportion between the amount of suffering caused by 
 vivisection and the advantage gained. " Suppose it is capable of 
 proof," says Lord Coleridge,* " that by putting to death with 
 hideous torment three thousand horses you could find out the 
 real nature of some feverish symptom, I should say, without the 
 least hesitation, that it would be unlawful to torture the horses." 
 Accepting the proportion as stated, we will have: Torture of 
 three thousand horses is to knowledge of real nature of feverish 
 symptom as power gained by such knowledge is to prevention of 
 death annually from splenic fever, we will say, of many millions of 
 cattle, horses, and sheep, and thousands of men in Europe. There 
 is no very exact " proportion " between end and means, but Na- 
 ture is too generous to insist on exact " proportions " when men 
 study her laws aright. 
 
 The difficulty with good people who reason out this "propor- 
 tion " is that they fail to grasp the stupendous size of the prob- 
 lems involved, the whole world over and through all time. France 
 alone is estimated to lose sheep to the value of four million dollars 
 annually from splenic fever, and in one district, Beauce, one hun- 
 dred and eighty-seven thousand sheep are killed annually by it. 
 In Russia, during 1857, it was reported that one hundred thou- 
 sand horses perished from the disease. In other epidemics, the 
 losses within small districts reach tens of thousands, and in one a 
 thousand people caught the disease and perished, f 
 
 * Coleridge. The Nineteenth Century Defenders of Vivisection, p. 8. 
 f R. M. Smith. Therapeutic Gazette, November, 1884 ; and George Fleming. Vivisec- 
 tion and Diseases of Animals. Nineteenth Century, 1882, p. 4*70. 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 9 
 
 Or suppose it to be a " knowledge of the real nature of some 
 symptom " of one of the fevers that are yearly causing in this 
 country the premature death of nearly fifty thousand people,* 
 and the knowledge gained saved the life of but one, the propor- 
 tion would still stand approved in the minds of all humane peo- 
 ple. I am aware that Miss Cobbe has said in effect, Our days are 
 numbered, and I would not have my own or those of my friends 
 spared or lengthened by the suffering of animals. This senti- 
 ment is sanctioned by no code of Christian ethics. For all nor- 
 mal, rational, and truly humane people the following statement 
 of Prof. Davis is true beyond danger of cavil. He says : " When 
 the brute's ordinary right to welfare, yielding exemption from 
 inflicted pain, confronts man's right to welfare, it (the welfare of 
 the brute) shrinks to zero and disappears." f 
 
 In order to test the popular acceptance of this principle, I 
 actually put the following question to twenty American women : 
 " Let the suffering be any amount necessary, how many dogs and 
 cats do you feel that you would give to save the life of one human 
 being ? " Without exception, these women have answered, " I 
 ivould give all the dogs and cats in the world." 
 
 Contrast with this the following sentiments from the pen of a 
 woman who is perhaps the most active agitatrix of antivivisec- 
 tion in this country. She answers as follows : " How many hu- 
 mian lives which you ' experimenters ' are so anxious (apparently) 
 to prolong are really worth the time and trouble ? . . . Would 
 the world not be benefited were they allowed to pass to another 
 sphere, where perhaps the conditions would be more favorable to 
 moral and spiritual advancement ?" Such perversion of human 
 sentiment is little, if any, short of the pathological, and calls for 
 no further comment. 
 
 Thus is seen the impossibility of separating morality from 
 utility. If the right of the animal stand in the way of human 
 use, " it shrinks to zero." If one human life can be saved, any 
 amount of animal suffering necessary is justified. With this 
 noble sentiment we thus accept the burden of proving that the 
 sacrifice of animal life has brought us knowledge by which the 
 human life has been prolonged and the sufferings of humanity 
 have been ameliorated. With this proved, it is clear that it may 
 be as much the moral and religious duty of a man to vivisect, 
 who has faith that be can advance the cause of humanity by so 
 doing, as it is his duty to preach or teach who has equal faith in 
 these occupations. We shall treat the argument for utility in 
 
 * Compendium of the Tenth Annual Census, pp. 1708, 1*709. 
 
 f Prof. Noah K. Davis. The Moral Aspects of Vivisection. North American Review, 
 1885, p. 217. 
 
lo THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 the succeeding chapter. Before passing on to this head, however, 
 two moral questions, fundamental to the whole discussion, must 
 be carefully considered. 
 
 An assumption found in every, or almost every, antivivisec- 
 tion argument is that vivisection must be demoralizing to those 
 who practice or witness it. Neither fact nor proof is adduced. 
 From beginning to end it is pure tissue of antivivisection im- 
 agination, like the old assumptions against the first anatomists. 
 The assumption is not only unfounded but thoroughly irrational. 
 It would be precisely as sane to assume that a missionary who 
 goes to preach among the heathen tends to become heathenous ; 
 or that anything in the practice of surgery or medicine tends to 
 blunt the sensibilities of men in these professions. Granting that 
 there are brutal men in the medical profession, as there are in all 
 others, carries no proof that their work has made them so. It 
 may have made them decidedly more humane than they ever 
 would have been without it. 
 
 On just this point I have taken the pains to collect the testi- 
 mony of experienced teachers of physiology in thirteen institu- 
 tions in this country, where the greater part of our vivisectional 
 work is done. In every case the moral effect of experimentation 
 is claimed to be wholesome, and in no case have they any evi- 
 dence of its being evil. I will quote from but one instance, the 
 experience of a professor in an institution for the higher educa- 
 tion of women. He writes : " In numerous cases students have 
 entered the course with decided objections to the practice of vivi- 
 section ; and in no case, so far as I know, have they left without 
 the removal of their objections and the substitution for them 
 of sound views as to the necessity and value of vivisectional 
 work." 
 
 The other question is one which touches the bed rock of human 
 life : What is the use of living anyway ? It is Franklin's old 
 question, " What is the use of a baby, unless it is to become a 
 man ? *' but with the added question. What is the use of the 
 man ? A good many people every year look their lives in the 
 face in this way, and, deciding that this life is of no use or worse 
 than no use, put an end to it. 
 
 Furthermore, What is, or what may be, the value of a man's 
 life work ? And how far have we the moral right to pass judg- 
 ment as to the value or use of another's life or work ? With the 
 earth reeking in carnage and with humanity and animate Nature 
 writhing in pain, how is it possible to say that God has ordered 
 Nature wisely and mercifully ? And taking Nature as we find 
 it, what can man do about it ? 
 
 One theory has always been that the forces of Nature and life 
 are far too vast for man's feeble powers to influence for good or 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. ii 
 
 for ill ; that Ws chief duty lies in resignation to fate. Directly- 
 opposed to this is the spirit of modern science, which considers it 
 man's duty to go to work and manufacture fate. What right, it 
 would ask, have we to assume that the forces of Nature are diffi- 
 cult of control until all the laws which govern them are investi- 
 gated ? Numberless instances in the history of science prove that 
 his powerlessness is a mere bugbear of man's own imagining. It 
 may be so in all cases. If man will only put forth a reasonable 
 amount of effort, it may not be so difficult to comply with the 
 command, " Subdue the earth." 
 
 Still, the old superstitions cling tenaciously to the best of men. 
 A child sickens and dies, and we say, " It is the will of God, so let 
 it be." What right has man to lay this flattering unction to his 
 lazy soul ? The scientific spirit would say : " It is the ignorance 
 of man. It is his duty to learn enough about this disease to pre- 
 vent or cure it." In taking this position science simply accepts 
 the universal principle that ignorance of law does not exempt 
 from penalty, and hence would study the law under which 
 the calamity occurred and, by obedience, escape the penalty in 
 future. 
 
 To conclude in a sentence the result of a chain of reasoning too 
 long to even outline in detail, all the suffering and physical evil 
 in living Nature finds ample justification for its existence if, serv- 
 ing as a spur to man, it arouses him to use his intelligence and 
 put forth every energy available to alleviate the misery of the 
 world and improve its condition. In other words. Nature is ivisely 
 ordered to give man plenty to do, and to do this work is one of his 
 highest duties. How he is to accomplish it, depends upon the 
 means he finds at hand, which prove themselves useful to his 
 purposes. 
 
 In passing to a consideration of the utility of scientific experi- 
 mentation, it must be remembered that we are not discussing the 
 question with infanticides, murderers, or would-be suicides. It 
 can be considered only with those who believe that, after moral 
 excellence, human life and happiness and freedom from disease 
 are the most useful things in the world. 
 
 in.— THE UTILITY OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 ASIDE from the highest "use of science," its satisfaction of 
 •^LX. man's intellectual wants and its influence upon his char- 
 acter, science has many " practical " values connected with its de- 
 velopment. And it is to these " uses " of physiological research 
 that we will confine attention, bearing in mind that we are ad- 
 dressing those who believe that, after duty, human health and 
 
12 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 happiness are the highest values in the world, and that the 
 greatest evils in the world, after moral evil, are human suffering 
 caused by disease and premature death. 
 
 How much " use " humanity has for help in these regards may 
 be seen from a glance at vital statistics. "Of 1,000,000 people 
 starting out in life, 497,000 will die, almost all from disease, before 
 reaching the age of forty-one." * We are losing yearly in this 
 country over 302,806 children under five years of age.f There 
 certainly is no " use " in this. 
 
 A recent writer X has actually cited mortality statistics to 
 prove the futility of vivisection. The figures do show that in 
 England since 1850 certain organic diseases have been on the in- 
 crease, despite the slight advance in our knowledge of them. At 
 first blush this table given by Leffingwell strikes one as a serious 
 argument against the utility of research. On closer inspection, 
 however, it only reveals the astute cunning of this author in the 
 selection of his diseases. Almost without exception these maladies 
 lie very deep in the hereditary tendencies of the race, and we 
 could not expect them to be checked and reversed in so short a 
 time. With increase of wealth and advance in civilization the 
 chance that defectives may leave enfeebled progeny is greatly in- 
 creased, and that there has not been an even greater increase in 
 these diseases is cause for congratulation. But even if the statis- 
 tics would support the significance Leffingwell attaches to them, 
 what are we to do about it ? The only courageous course would 
 seem to be to acknowledge the extreme difficulty of the problems 
 involved and attack them with redoubled energy. Over two 
 thousand years of clinical observation and empiricism have prob- 
 ably about exhausted possibilities in these directions, so that our 
 only hope would seem to lie in experiment ; and the less prelimi- 
 nary experimenting on men, the better. If Leffingwell had been 
 able to prove from statistics that there is no curable disease in the 
 world, he would have had a strong argument. As it stands, how- 
 ever, it must be acknowledged to be the strongest possible argu- 
 ment for the side of research. 
 
 The chief point of unfairness of the table lies in Leffingwell's 
 selection of diseases. Why confine attention to statistics of or- 
 ganic disease ? In acute diseases, where we would naturally look 
 for the first fruits of scientific work, the gain has been considerable. 
 
 In support of this, we may quote a few passages from News- 
 holme's Vital Statistics. On page 273 he says : " If these chil- 
 dren " (the 858,878 born annually in England) " be traced through 
 
 * Albert Buck. A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health, vol. ii, pp. 328, 329. 
 
 f Tenth Census Compendium, p. 1707. 
 
 X Albert Leffingwell. Vivisection, p. 75, Boston, Mass., 1889 (date of introduction). 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 13 
 
 life, the clianges in the death-rates occurring 1871-1880, as com- 
 pared with 1838-1854, would result in an addition of 1,800,047 
 years of life shared among them ; and since this number of births 
 occurs annually, it may be reasonably inferred that there is an 
 annual addition of nearly 2,000,000 years of life to the community, 
 the greater share in which mus be ascribed to sanitary meas- 
 ures. ... In the decennium 1871-1880, the death-rate from fever 
 fell from an annual average of 885 per million to 484, a decline of 
 forty-five per cent" (page 183). For scarlet fever the decline be- 
 tween 1875 and 1885 was forty-nine per cent (page 185). 
 
 From tables, page 101, we see that the death-rate per 1,000 in 
 1838-40 was, for males, 23*3 ; in 1887, only 19*8 ; for females, in 
 1838-'40, 22-5 ; in 1887, only 17-8. 
 
 From comparing death-rates for the ten years before and 
 after 1872, the year of the passage of the Public Health Act, we 
 find that " no less than 392,749 persons who, under the old regime, 
 would have died, were, as a matter of fact, still living at the 
 close of 1881. . . . Add to these saved lives the avoidance of at 
 least four times as many attacks of non-fatal illness, and we have 
 the total profits as yet received from our sanitary expenditure " 
 (p. 127). " We may add that if the death-rates between 1881-1888 
 are included, the improvement becomes even more striking." Thus : 
 
 Mean annual death- 
 Record of years. rate per 1,000. 
 
 Public Health Act, 1872. Ten years, 1862-'7l 22-6 
 
 Four " 1872-'75 21-8 
 
 Five " 1875-'80 20-79 
 
 " " 1881-'85... 19-30 
 
 1886 19-38 
 
 1887..... 18-79 
 
 1888 17-83* 
 
 For Boston, 1892 23-3 
 
 " London, 1887 19*6 
 
 " Lowell, Mass., 1892 26-6 
 
 " Massachusetts, 1892 20-6f 
 
 We are frequently met here by the statement that improved 
 sanitary measures nave nothing to do with vivisection. But, in 
 order to gain the passage of costly sanitary measures, sound rea- 
 sons must be given ; these are drawn almost wholly from the pure 
 sciences of physiology and hygiene, and in just those points which 
 bear on public sanitation science owes much to experiment as an 
 essential part. The truth of this we shall see more and more 
 clearly as we proceed. 
 
 * Arthur Newsholme. The Elements of Vital Statistics. London, 1889. 
 f A Summary of the Vital Statistics of the New England States for the Year 1892. 
 Boston and London. 
 
H 
 
 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 The most encouraging feature in the comparison of the new 
 with the old tables of vital statistics is the decrease in child 
 mortality. ' Newsholme, page 101, gives tables of annual death- 
 rates by age-groups from 1838 to 1887. From this we see that 
 whereas in 1838-'40, in every thousand infants born, 72'6 died 
 under five years of age, in 1887 only 57'8 were lost — a gain of 
 over twenty per cent. Abbreviating the table, we have, per 
 thousand births : 
 
 Age— 
 
 to 5 years. 
 
 5 to 10 years. 
 
 10 to IB years. 
 
 1838-'40, died.. 
 
 '72-6 
 5'7-8 
 
 ^■1 
 4-9 
 
 5-3 
 
 1887, died 
 
 2-9 
 
 
 
 
 A gain of 
 
 20-6 
 
 49-5 
 
 45-2 
 
 
 
 These things give us ground for courage and hope, but not for 
 rest — not as long as diphtheria is annually taking from the homes 
 of this country its 49,677 children ; not while fevers are yearly 
 " baking to death " 126,332 of our people ; and while consumption 
 is causing years of suffering and the loss annually to this country 
 of 102,199 valuable lives. 
 
 Were this wholesale slaughter the work of a national enemy 
 or of visible wild beasts, the public would not be slow in its ap- 
 preciation of any attempt to meet the common foe. But the 
 struggle is none the less real, and the intelligence and often the 
 courage and self-sacrifice required to carry it on are no whit less 
 than in the struggles of a race to subdue a savage continent or a 
 human enemy. With the conquest of all the continental areas 
 assured to man, if war, according to the hopes and theories of 
 some, were a thing of the past, the next great step in the develop- 
 ment of the race must be this conquest of the forces of disease. 
 A comparatively small branch of the human race has come to 
 face the issue squarely on experimental lines, and to realize the 
 fact that success can be achieved in no other way. The fate of 
 the Hindus stands as a warning that even an Aryan strain may 
 lapse into the abject imbecility of zoolatry and mysticism. The 
 race that meets this stupendous issue, that succeeds in giving to 
 men the laws by observance of which can be attained, not only 
 freedom from disease, but also the development of the highest 
 type of man, that race alone can carry out to its full perfection 
 the evolution of mankind. In course of its development this 
 race will be able to bestow incalculable benefits upon other races 
 and upon even the animal species which it finds useful to pre- 
 serve. 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 15 
 
 IV.— THE ARGUMENT AS TO THE UTILITY OF VIVISECTION IN SPECIAL 
 
 CASES. 
 
 Attempts to prove or disprove the utility of vivisection by- 
 special cases have needlessly complicated and embittered the dis- 
 cussion. Matters involved in the warmest medical controversy 
 have been freely introduced, and naturally an abundance of strong 
 language has been at the disposal of either side. It must there- 
 fore be distinctly understood as we proceed that this is not the 
 place to settle medical controversies nor to write a complete his- 
 tory of useful medicine. We are to deal not with medical con- 
 troversy nor with medical history, but with pure argument — argu- 
 ment to prove from special instances the use to humanity of 
 vivisectional methods of investigating the processes of living 
 Nature. This being our purpose, we must leave to experts all 
 discussions of such things as antitoxine, hydrophobia inoculation, 
 etc., and confine our attention to cases about which there is the 
 least medical controversy and about which people generally agree. 
 We will thus select classical cases, the older the better, and only 
 so many as will serve to render the argument clear and to illus- 
 trate best the methods of vivisectional work. 
 
 The special cases of Harvey, Charles Bell, Magendie, and 
 Claude Bernard have come to be an established feature in every 
 discussion of this subject, and so many wrong impressions re- 
 garding them remain uncorrected that we must consider their 
 work at some length. 
 
 A knowledge of the circulation of the blood, no intelligent per- 
 son can deny, has been of great practical value to men. It affords 
 a foundation for all laws of hygiene and for the practice of sur- 
 gery and medicine. 
 
 The first great step in the line of this discovery was made by 
 Galen. " By ligating in a living animal an artery in two places, 
 and opening ihe vessel between the ligatures, Galen demon- 
 strated that the vessel contained blood. Thus by an experiment 
 upon a living animal, a vivisection, the first great source of error, 
 the supposition that the arteries contained air, was removed, the 
 true nature of an artery demonstrated, and the modern theory of 
 the circulation made possible." * 
 
 Whatever may be the claims of Servetus and Csesalpinus, 
 there can be no doubt that the one man to unite the observa- 
 tions of his predecessors into an intelligible whole, to found 
 his own observations upon experiment, in short, to discover the 
 
 * H. C. Chapman. History of the Disco verj of the Circulation of the Blood, p. 12. 
 Philadelphia, 1884. 
 
i6 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 circulation of the blood as we now understand it, was William 
 Harvty.* 
 
 The claim is often made that Harvey discovered the circula- 
 tion by " thinking," by " inductive reasoning," and not by vivi- 
 sectional experiment. As well say that Columbus discovered 
 America by thinking and not by experiment. Harvey not only 
 thought out the circulation, which is a very small matter, but he 
 demonstrated it to be a fact by innumerable experiments upon 
 living animals, which is a very great m itter. Here, again, we 
 must emphasize the fact that Harvey did not study, and could 
 not possibly have studied, in dead animals "the motion of the 
 heart and blood in animals." To found his great thesis on a 
 broad basis of experiment, Harvey vivisected a great many kinds 
 of animals, from his own person to " shrimps, snails, and shell- 
 fish." 
 
 Chapter I of Harvey's great work, De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis 
 in AnimalibuSjf begins, " Cum multis vivorum dissectionibus (uti 
 ad manum dabantur) animum ad observandum primum appuli 
 quo cordis motus usum," etc. 
 
 Chapter II is entitled Ex vivorum dissectione, qualis sit cordis 
 motus. 
 
 Chapter III is entitled Arteriarum motus qualis ex vivorum 
 dissectione. 
 
 Chapter IV is entitled Motus cordis et auricularum qualis ex 
 vivorum dissectione. 
 
 The argument that Harvey was led to his discovery by " rea- 
 soning upon the valves in the veins," as stated by Boyle, is well 
 answered by his translator, Willis, J who points out at some 
 length that "when we turn to Harvey himself, in his works we 
 nowhere find that he approaches his subject from the quarter now 
 particularly indicated " (i. e., from the purpose of the valves in 
 the veins). 
 
 * Read J. H. Baas. Outlines of the History of Medicine. New York, 1889, pp. 52'7-530. 
 Also Sprengel, in his Geschichte der Arzneykunde, gives Harvey the frontispiece in vol. It, 
 and devotes forty pages (50-89) to his work of discovering the circulation of the blood. 
 Also Haeser, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, vol. ii, pp. 252-262, devotes eleven 
 pages to " Discovery of the Circulation, Harvey." And when a man comes forward and says, 
 " It is only our insular pride which has claimed for him the merit of the discovery," he 
 brands himself as a person with w'hom it is impossible to reason (as does Lawson Tait, 
 TTselessness of Vivisection upon Animals, p. 6). Any one desirous of investigating the 
 trustworthiness of Tait in such matters can find him fully discussed, in a way he has not 
 been able to answer, in the book Physiological Cruelty, by " Philanthropos," Appendix E, 
 and also in Heidenhein, Vivisection, Leipsic, 1884, pp. 85 ff. 
 
 f Harvei Opera, 1737, or The Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. Sydenham 
 edition, Lo^ndon, 1847. 
 
 X Willis. William Harvey, a History of the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood. 
 London, 1878, pp. 301 ff. 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 17 
 
 Even Harvey was attacked during his life on tlie ground that 
 the discovery of the circulation was of "no use" (Willis, p. 258), 
 " because men still continued to die/' 
 
 For Harvey the blood passed through the flesh {per partium 
 porosifates), and not until the microscope was available was it 
 possible for Malpighi to discover the capillary circulation in 
 1661. This he did in the exposed lung of a living frog. 
 
 In recent years Claude Bernard * greatly advanced our knowl- 
 edge of the circulation by demonstrating, wholly by vivisectional 
 methods, that the flow of the blood is regulated by a nervous 
 mechanism continuously acting to contract or dilate the vessels 
 according to the requirements of each organ or part of the body. 
 Thus it is seen that every important step in the advance of our 
 knowledge of the circulation of the blood has been made by vivi- 
 section and could not possibly have been made in any other way. 
 
 Similarly, the testimony of Sir Charles Bell is constantly ad- 
 duced to prove the futility of vivisection. Bell is the anatomist 
 to whom, with Magendie and Johannes Miiller, we owe the first 
 great advance in the experimental study of the nervous system. 
 He first demonstrated, though in no thoroughly satisfactory 
 manner, the twofold function of the spinal roots. It is true that 
 Bell did say some things derogatory of physiological experiment 
 about the beginning of this century. But it is also true that his 
 actions speak louder than his words. By reference to his works, 
 we find that Bell made this great discovery in the only way pos- 
 sible — viz., by means of vivisectional experiments. He actually 
 vivisected asses, kittens, rabbits, fowls, monkeys, and dogs, per- 
 forming the same experiments for which Magendie has been so 
 severely criticised.! Charles Bell was exceedingly sensitive upon 
 the point of causing pain to animals, as is shown by several pas- 
 sages in his works ; and it is certainly a strong argument for the 
 necessity of vivisection that a man of his sensitive nature should 
 be compelled to resort to this method in order to demonstrate the 
 truth of his theories. It must bo remembered that he had no 
 anaesthetics, and therefore his position can not apply to the 
 present discussion of the subject. Were he operating to-day, 
 with chloroform, ether, morphine, chloral, paraldehyde, cocaine, 
 and other anaesthetics at his disposal, he need have had no 
 twinges of conscience about the pain his experiments occasioned. 
 
 Magendie completed BelFs work, placing it upon a firm basis 
 by means of experiments for which he has been accused of most 
 atrocious cruelty. It is sufficient to reply that Magendie, too. 
 
 * Cl. Bernard. Le9ons sur le Diabfite. Paris, 1877, p. 43. 
 
 f Charles Bell. Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain. London, 1811. Transcribed 
 
 by H. U. D., 1813. Also, Nervous System of the Human Body. London, 1830. 
 2 
 
i8 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 worked before ansesthetics were discovered, and when people's 
 ideas about physical pain were very different from our ideas at 
 present. And Magendie was, to say the least, as oblivions to his 
 own suffering as he was to that of the animals he experimented 
 upon. When cholera broke out in France, in 1832, he went as a 
 volunteer into the center of the afflicted district, and afterward 
 served in the great cholera hospital, the Hotel Dieu, during the 
 epidemic in Paris, and for his heroism received the cross of the 
 Legion of Honor * — " The fiend Magendie.'^ 
 
 Take, for example, another great line of physiological work 
 than which few discoveries have been of more practical value to 
 human life. Upon a knowledge of the physiology of respiration 
 we build and ventilate, or ought to, at least, dwelling and school 
 houses, audience rooms, and hospitals. 
 
 The first important discovery in this line was made by Sir 
 Robert Boyle (1670), who found, by the use of his air pump, that 
 if he deprived animals of air they died. He vivisected in this 
 way kittens, 'birds, frogs, fish, snakes, and insects, f Boyle also 
 discovered that by keeping animals in a closed reservoir the air 
 became unfit to sustain life. 
 
 Priestley, a century later (1772), continued Boyle's experiments 
 by keeping mice in air-tight receivers until the air was vitiated 
 and would no longer support life. He then tried to restore the 
 air to its former condition : he rarefied and condensed it, heated 
 it, exposed it to water and earth, and treated it in many other 
 ways, each time testing it with living mice to ascertain whether 
 it would again support life. All this was to no effect. In every 
 case the mice died. Finally, he found that after plants grew for 
 a while in the vitiated air, mice could again live in it. Thus was 
 discovered the important relation between animal and vegetable 
 respiration, and we now plant trees and lay out parks, and call 
 them the " lungs of our cities." Two points must be emphasized 
 here : first, that Priestley could not have done this with dead 
 mice ; and, second, that no one except Lawson Tait and Miss 
 Cobbe would have the hardihood to claim that he ought to have 
 used live men instead of live mice, on grounds of moral rights, 
 and from the fact that the physiology of man is " so different " 
 from the physiology of the mouse. 
 
 Turning to still another important line of scientific work, 
 diseases of microbic origin are said to cause four fifths of the 
 
 * J. C. Dalton. Magendie as a Physiologist. International Review, February, 1880, 
 p. 120. The story of Magendie's repentance and distrust of vivisection, shortly before his 
 death, has often been adduced against this method of research. After careful search 
 through all the accounts of Magendie's life (thirteen in number), Dalton is able to say that 
 there is no intimation of any ground for this idea. 
 
 f Boyle. Philosophical Transactions, vol. v, pp. 2011-2065. 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 19 
 
 sickness in the world. As an example of researches in this field, 
 we may cite the classical work of Edward Jenner.* 
 
 Jenner began to study in earnest the disease cowpox, and its 
 relation to smallpox, in 1775. For twenty-one years he patiently 
 investigated the subject, and found that no one who had once 
 suffered an attack of cowpox was taken with smallpox, although 
 frequently exposed. " Legends of the dairymaids " had told for 
 generations that an attack of cowpox conferred exemption from 
 smallpox forever after. Jenner might have told the same 
 story ; but, if he had not proved the truth of his assertion by 
 experiment, we might still have nothing but "legends of dairy- 
 maids" and no vaccination. 
 
 In May of 1796 Jenner began his experiments. He says 
 (page 29) : "The more accurately to observe the progress of the 
 infection, I selected a healthy boy, about eight years of age, for 
 the purpose of inoculation for the cowpox." This inoculation 
 was followed by an attack of the disease. But Jenner does not 
 stop here. Again, he says : " In order to ascertain whether the 
 boy was secure from the contagion of the smallpox, he was inocu- 
 lated the 1st of July following with variolous matter immediately 
 taken from a pustule. Several punctures were made in both 
 arms, and the matter was carefully inserted, but no disease 
 followed." 
 
 Some might have called the discovery complete at this point, 
 but Jenner realized that one case is not every case, and that he 
 must repeat the experiment, which he did scores of times, even 
 going so far as to endanger human life in order to establish the 
 truth of his discovery. For he goes on to say (page 41) : " To con- 
 vince myself that the variolous matter made use of was in a perfect 
 state, I [at the same time that he inoculated a patient previously 
 inoculated with cowpox] inoculated a patient with some of it 
 who had never gone through the cowpox, and it produced the 
 smallpox in the usual regular manner." 
 
 Previous to the introduction of vaccination in London the 
 average annual death-rate per million from smallpox was (News- 
 holme, table, page ] 92) : 
 
 l'728-'5Y 4,260 
 
 IT^I-'SO 5,020 
 
 1801-'10 2,040 beginning of Jenner's work. 
 
 18'72-'82 262 
 
 1885 1,419 
 
 1886 24 
 
 188T 9 
 
 * Edward Jenner. An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolas Vaccinae, 
 December 20, 1799. London, 1801. 
 
26 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 Germany now has the most efficient laws of probably any 
 country for making not only vaccination bnt repetition at stated 
 intervals obligatory. As a result smallpox is rapidly disappear- 
 ing. In 1888 the deaths from smallpox in the entire empire 
 amounted to one hundred and ten, less than 3'5 per million, and 
 the majority of these occurred on or near the boundaries of other 
 countries. We can easily appreciate the usefulness of this. Still, 
 during this work Jenner was persecuted and abused. 
 
 Jenner's experiments belong to the class of investigations 
 which since 1850 Thiersch has made for cholera, Lister for in- 
 flammation of wounds, Pasteur for rabies, Koch and Pasteur for 
 splenic fever, M. Freire for yellow fever, Koch later for cholera, 
 and has now begun to make for consumption. 
 
 Thiersch's experiments on cholera, which caused the death 
 of fourteen mice and proved that cholera is communicated 
 by swallowing particles of cholera discharge, have been an 
 important factor in the sanitary legislation of every civilized 
 country. 
 
 Two of the London water companies experimented with 
 cholera-polluted water upon 500,000 people, causing the death of 
 3,476 human beings in 1853-'54. This is the popular accidental 
 experiment which antivivisection writers tell us to wait for, and 
 which they say is sent by Providence to teach men physiology. 
 Thiersch made the same experiment upon fifty-six mice, the con- 
 ditions being accurately determined and scientifically controlled, 
 and with the death of fourteen mice gave the world more exact 
 information about the contagion of cholera than all the cholera 
 epidemics recorded in history. This is the scientific experiment 
 which we are told should not be made.* 
 
 The antiseptic method, which we owe in so great a measure to 
 the vivisectional experiments of Joseph Lister, is past all reason- 
 able controversy and we may refer to it here. It has come to be 
 used in hospitals generally, and has reduced mortality from sur- 
 gical operations to one tenth of what it was before. Any one 
 who has seen even a few cases of antiseptic surgery will readily 
 agree with Dr. Keen when he says : " Sir Joseph Lister has done 
 more to save human life and diminish human suffering than any 
 other man of the last fifty years." \ Still, Lister was obliged to 
 leave England to continue experiment in his merciful work after 
 the passage of the restrictive law in 1876. 
 
 In the Tubingen Hospital died from amputation before intro- 
 duction of Lister's method and after : 
 
 * John Simon. Experiments on Life. London, 1881. 
 
 f W. W. Keen. Our Debts to Vivisection. Reprint from Popular Science Monthly, May, 
 1885, p. 15. 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. z\ 
 
 Per cent. Per cent. 
 
 Oflowerlimb 43-5 3-2 
 
 Ofupperlimb 30-6 2-9* 
 
 We miglit extend much further the list of useful discoveries 
 which have depended for some essential part of their develop- 
 ment upon vivisectional experiment ; but such is not our present 
 purpose. The reader can find these amply discussed elsewhere. 
 We would, however, at this point call special attention to the way 
 in which a discovery of this kind is received. Jenner's smallpox 
 inoculation was obliged to run the same gantlet of popular and 
 professional favor and disfavor as Lister's discovery, as Koch's 
 and Pasteur's are running now. Such discoveries are in even 
 greater danger from ignorant and enthusiastic supporters than 
 from learned opponents. The problems involved are very com- 
 plicated. Exceptions of every kind occur — e. g., a person may 
 have smallpox twice, and so, although vaccination protects in 
 most cases," it does not in all; and, further, as Jenner himself 
 says, " inoculation sometimes under the best management proves 
 fatal." t 
 
 In the case of one of these complications in London, Jenner 
 has himself left a record in strong English of the way he felt. 
 Writing to Moore in 1811 he says : " The town is a fool, an idiot, 
 and will continue in this red-hot, hissing-hot state about this af- 
 fair until something else starts up to draw aside its attention. I 
 am determined to lock up my brains and think no more pro bono 
 publico, and I advise you, my friend, to do the same, for we are 
 sure to get nothing but abuse for it." J 
 
 We are, however, discussing the utility of a method, and while 
 we will not introduce Koch's treatment as an argument for the 
 utility of vivisection until it has been perfected and the medical 
 profession has reached a decision as to its value, we can hardly 
 find a better example of the vivisectional method. Koch's method 
 is that of Jenner perfected by using animals instead of men. His 
 discovery in 1882 of the tubercle bacillus has already become of 
 inestimable value in directing sanitary measures and in recog- 
 nizing the earlier stages of consumption while cure is possible. 
 This, we are told by an anti vivisection writer, **' was discovered 
 by the microscope, not by vivisection."* How did Koch make 
 this discovery ? 
 
 It is true the microscope assisted as spectacles help to read. 
 But Koch, in the examination of tuberculous matter, discovered 
 a number of germs with the microscope. Which one of these 
 
 * Heidenhaiu. Die Vivisection, p. 34. f Jenner, loc. cit., p. 5Y. 
 X Crookshank, op. cit., fol. i, p. 139. 
 
 * Ernest Bell, M. A. Weighed and Found Wanting, Victoria St. Society publication. 
 
22 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 caused consumption no number of microscopes could tell him. 
 This had to be settled by most careful experiments. There are 
 several steps in the process. The first is to identify all the differ- 
 ent kinds of microbes found constantly in tuberculous bodies. 
 For convenience we will call these microbes a, h, c, d. These are 
 mingled together. The second step is to cultivate these germs in 
 one test tube after another until perfectly "pure cultures" are 
 obtained — i. e., nothing but a's in one, nothing but b's in another, 
 and so on. Up to this stage he has not the least idea which of 
 these is the germ of consumption. The only way he can deter- 
 mine this point is by experimenting upon living animals. He 
 must then inoculate a number of healthy animals, one with germ 
 a, another with germ b, another with germ c, another with germ d. 
 The four animals are now watched carefully. The animal inocu- 
 lated with germ a, we will say, sickens and dies with unmistak- 
 able symptoms of tuberculosis. Those inoculated with germs &, 
 c, and d are not affected. He repeats the experiment several 
 times, and if each time with the same result is justified in con- 
 cluding that germ a is the cause of tuberculosis, while the other 
 germs are harmless. 
 
 This is but the first stage in the investigation. After the dis- 
 covery of the cause comes the question. How can this cause be 
 controlled ? How can its action be prevented ? Here, as Koch 
 says, men have begun at the wrong end of the problem. Since 
 the beginning of medicine the doctors have been experimenting 
 upon men to find a cure for consumption. The problem here is 
 too complicated, and in consequence little has been learned. Ex- 
 periment must begin, he says, with the bacillus itself. We must 
 grow it first in pure cultures in test tubes, in all manner of differ- 
 ent culture media and under all conditions of temperature and 
 light, in order to ascertain under what conditions it grows best 
 and under what conditions it can not grow. We must next sub- 
 ject it in the test tube to the influence of different chemical sub- 
 stances, and when some compound is discovered to kill or hinder 
 the growth of the bacillus in the culture, then the substance must 
 be tried upon tuberculous animals to ascertain whether in their 
 bodies as in the test tube it will act to kill the bacilli without in- 
 juring the animal. When a substance fatal to the bacillus and 
 harmless to the animal is found, with all due allowance for 
 differences between the animal and man, it may be tested on 
 man. 
 
 This, in brief, is but one important line of research, and clearly 
 it should be carried out thoroughly for every infectious disease. 
 A single link in the chain of procedure requires absolutely to be 
 welded by experiments upon living animals. With millions on 
 millions of human beings and animals suffering and dying yearly 
 
TEE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 23 
 
 for lack of this knowledge, no truly humane person can for a mo- 
 ment deny to an investigator the right to complete his work by 
 introducing this link. 
 
 In view of the stupendous values involved it is clear that any 
 amount necessary of animal or human sacrifice and suffering is 
 wholly justified. Whether unnecessary suffering is inflicted is a 
 question which only the highest experts can adequately decide. 
 Prof. Bowditch * has so thoroughly discussed the subject of pain 
 caused by vivisection that we would pass it by without mention, 
 were it not for the fact that the public mind has been of late so 
 much abused by misstatement and exaggeration on this head. 
 Prof. Yeo's estimate, the most reliable we have, is that in every 
 one hundred experiments seventy-five are " absolutely painless," 
 twenty are as " painful as vaccination," four, as " painful as the 
 healing of a wound," one, as " painful as a surgical operation." 
 The pain of vaccination is altogether trifling, and that of the 
 healing of a wound after antiseptic treatment is also practically 
 nil. This leaves but one per cent of all experiments as painful to 
 any serious degree. During over ten years' active experience in 
 three laboratories in this country and a number of the leading 
 laboratories abroad, I have never had occasion to perform or 
 witness an experiment of this painful class. Discovery of new 
 anaesthetics and more recent methods of operation have doubt- 
 less reduced the pain of experimentation even below Yeo's esti- 
 mate. In all laboratories in this country, and equally abroad, 
 I have always found ansesthetics adequately and uniformly em- 
 ployed. 
 
 In the recent discussions before the House Judiciary Com- 
 mittee of Massachusetts upon the bill relating to inspection of 
 vivisectional experiments in the medical schools and universities 
 of the State, none of the petitioners for the bill were able to cite 
 a single case, or the reasonable suspicion of a case, of abuse 
 of vivisection, as having occurred within the State of Massa- 
 chusetts, In order to obtain as reliable data as possible upon 
 this point, I sent blank tables, arranged according to the table 
 on page 24, to all the laboratories in Massachusetts where vivisec- 
 tional experiments were likely to be made. Returns were kindly 
 sent in from all the laboratories, and may safely be taken to 
 represent the experimental work in the State during the year 
 1894^'95. 
 
 * H. P. Bowditch, The Advancement of Medicme by Research. Science, July 24^ 
 1896. 
 
H 
 
 TBI! VIVISECTION QUESTION, 
 
 
 Number 
 used. 
 
 Painless. 
 
 PADfPUi AS 
 
 Animat.. 
 
 Vaccina- 
 tion. 
 
 Healing of 
 wound. 
 
 Effect of 
 poison. 
 
 Disease, 
 
 Frogs 
 
 866 
 
 23 
 
 25 
 
 146 
 
 465 
 
 22 
 
 95 
 
 30 
 
 3 
 
 845 
 19 
 25 
 61 
 
 18 
 
 91 
 
 10 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 50 
 150 
 
 '4 
 2 
 
 17 
 
 5 
 
 '4 
 
 2 
 
 
 Pigeons 
 
 Rats 
 
 ... 
 
 Rabbits 
 
 Guinea-pigs 
 
 Cats 
 
 30 
 315 
 
 Does 
 
 
 Mice 
 
 20 
 
 Squirrels 
 
 ■ ' * 
 
 Totals 
 
 1,675 
 
 1,0Y2 
 (64^) 
 
 204 
 (12-2^) 
 
 6 
 (0-4^) 
 
 28 
 (1-6^) 
 
 365 
 (21 -850 
 
 Contrast with this the 34,419 human beings who die of disease 
 annually in Massachusetts. 
 
 A general principle underlying vivisectional work is also re- 
 vealed in the table, viz., that the lowest animal adequate for the 
 purposes of the research be employed in preference to one more 
 highly organized. This entirely negatives an assumption often 
 advanced that animal vivisection tends toward human vivisec- 
 tion. The whole tendency of modern physiology has been exactly 
 the reverse. Animals have come to be used in order to save 
 human beings from abuse.* In the very beginning of medicine 
 every attempt to cure disease or alleviate suffering must have 
 been, in the nature of the case, an act of human vivisection. A 
 large proportion of modern medicine at present is equally in 
 essence nothing more nor less than human vivisection, and it is 
 only gradually, as elements of experiment and uncertainty are 
 eliminated from remedial measures by more exact knowledge, 
 that the practice of medicine becomes anything more than human 
 vivisection, f 
 
 A further argument against the utility of animal experimen- 
 tation is based on differences between animals and men, which 
 make it unsafe to apply results directly from the animal to man. 
 A logical error is here involved; for, while there are physio- 
 logical differences between different animals, to one point of dif- 
 
 * The recent action of Dr. J. S. Pyle (A Plea for the Appropriation of Criminals con- 
 demned to Capital Punishment to the Experimental Physiologist, Canton, Ohio, 1893), so 
 far as I have been able to ascertain, is an individual matter, and can not be taken to repre- 
 sent in the slightest degree the tendency of experimental medicine or the attitude of ex- 
 perimental physiologists in this country. 
 
 f The Zend-Avesta permitted a doctor to practice his art upon three heretics. If these 
 all died or were made worse by his treatment, he was forbidden, on penalty of death, to fol- 
 low his profession further. If they recovered, he might begin practice upon the faithful. — 
 Sprengel. Geschichte der Arzneykunde, vol. i, p. 126. (Refers to Zend-Avesta, Part III, 
 p. 336.) 
 
THE VIVISECTION QUESTION, 25 
 
 ference there are many points of close similarity. A difference in 
 physiological function is technically known as an idiosyncrasy. 
 These differences exist between individual men as well as be- 
 tween different species of animals. A man who has had small- 
 pox or measles acquires an idiosyncrasy which protects him from 
 having them again. In some cases this difference exists from 
 birth ; in others it is impossible to acquire it. Man himself be- 
 gins life as a microscopical speck of living matter, and in his 
 physical development passes through and beyond the lower stages 
 of organic life. Hence the fundamental physiological processes 
 and functions he has in common with the great body of living 
 things beneath him. On this wider view physiological idiosyn- 
 crasy becomes the strongest possible incentive to experiment. 
 How is it that certain species have become wholly immune from 
 certain diseases ? With the secret of this immunity discovered, 
 it may be easy to induce a similar immunity in another species or 
 in man. 
 
 The conclusion which follows from the foregoing chapters 
 bears directly upon a topic of considerable present importance, 
 viz., that of legislative interference with scientific work.* With 
 due appreciation of scientific achievements in the past, we must 
 keep ever before us the fact that the hardest labors and richest 
 harvests in science are still in the future. And every considera- 
 tion of religion, morality, altruism, humanity, and utility urge to 
 the prosecution of physiological education and research with una- 
 bated energy. Hence no legislative action should be taken which 
 could possibly offer hindrance or annoyance to either teachers or 
 investigators. 
 
 In accordance with the pernicious principle that a law can do 
 no harm except to offenders, the English Parliament, in 1876, 
 passed an act severely restricting vivisectional work. This action 
 of England was promptly reversed by every other European na- 
 tion where the subject was agitated, and by every State Legisla- 
 ture in this country to which the matter has been referred. 
 Within the past year this reversal has been reafiirmed in Switzer- 
 land and in Massachusetts. The restrictive act in England served 
 not in the least to abate the agitation and protect physiologists in 
 their work, as was intended ; but, as an eminent English physi- 
 ologist puts it, has " only tended to encourage the opponents of 
 science in their vexatious interference." English antivivisec- 
 tionists under this encouragement have shifted position from 
 restriction to total abolition, and have increased the agitation. 
 We have in this country at least three societies organized on the 
 platform of total abolition of physiological experiments. The 
 
 * For fuller discuseion of this topic see Bowditch, loc. eit, pp. 8-16, and appendix. 
 
,26 THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 
 
 legislative measures advanced thus far by these organizations 
 have been mild in the main ; but while they emphasize before the 
 public the fact that their laws do not aim to " prohibit " experi- 
 ments, they are also unguarded enough to speak of them as " the 
 entering wedge for more radical measures in the future/' * Clear- 
 ly, for medical and scientific faculties, for medical societies, and 
 for all who have at heart the advancement of humanity and sci- 
 ence, the strategic point at which to meet the enemy is the point 
 of " the entering wedge." 
 
 After conscientiously reading their literature for the past five 
 years I feel warranted in saying that science has little to fear 
 from the efforts of the antivivisection societies. Their methods 
 of agitation would sink even a worthy cause. The real danger 
 lies with scientific men themselves who entertain ideas of con- 
 ciliation and comj)romise which will admit the point of the " en- 
 tering wedge." Prof. Michael Foster has had the benefit of twenty 
 years' experience in conducting a laboratory under restrictive 
 legislation, and his advice should certainly carry great weight. 
 He writes as follows : " My earnest advice " (to us in America) 
 "is to straighten your backs, and, knowing that no legislation is 
 necessary on grounds of humanity, and that all legislation is bad 
 for science, strain every effort to defeat the agitation." f 
 
 * Antivivisection, June, 1896, pp. 9 and 13. Aurora, 111. 
 
 f Private letter from Prof. Foster to the writer, under date of February 1, 1896. 
 
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