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 QP45 .T13 The uselessness of V 
 
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 The uselessness of vivisQction as 
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 WHAT THE EXPERT SAYS. 
 
 THE 
 
 DSELESSNESS 
 
 OF 
 
 VIVISECTION 
 
 AS A METHOD 
 
 OF SCIENTIFIC 
 RESEARCH. 
 
 BY 
 
 PROF. 
 
 LAWSON 
 
 TAIT, 
 
 F.R.C.S., Etc. 
 
 Read before the 
 
 Birmingham 
 
 Philosophical 
 
 Society, 
 
 April 20, 1882, 
 
 and reprinted 
 
 from the 
 
 Society's 
 
 Transactions. 
 
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 "THE ABOLITIONIST. " 
 
 Monthly Organ of the British Union. 
 
 containing 
 
 High-class Articles on the Moral, Scientific, and Historical 
 Aspects of the Anti-Vivisection Question ; 
 Replies to the Research Defence Society ; 
 
 Racy Criticism of New Vivisectional " Cures" ; 
 Chronicle of the Month's Work, &c. 
 
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THE 
 
 USELESSNESS of VIVISECTION 
 
 AS A METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC 
 RESEARCH. 
 
 BY 
 
 LAWSON TAIT, F.R.C.S., ETC. 
 
 NEW EDITION, WITH NOTES. 
 
 READ BEFORE THE BIRMINGHAM PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 
 
 APRIL 20TH, 1882, 
 
 AND REPRINTED FROM THE SOCIETY'S TRANSACTIONS. 
 
 REPRINTED BY THE 
 
 BRITISH UNION for the ABOLITION of VIVISECTION 
 
 (the BRITISH ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY), 
 
 32 CHARING CROSS, LONDON, S.W. 
 
 Price Threepence. 
 
Tl3 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION 
 
 AS A METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 
 
 I NEED not go into the general history of Vivisection, for it hardly 
 bears upon the question to which I desire to limit myself; but I 
 think it advisable to formulate a few preliminary conclusions before 
 I come to my immediate subject, in order that I may clear the way 
 for discussion, and show at once the grounds upon which I stand, 
 for I find myself in a position adverse to the view adopted by the 
 great majority of my professional brethren. 
 
 I dismiss at once the employment of experiments on living 
 animals for the purpose of mere instruction, as absolutely unneces- 
 sary, and to be put an end to by legislation without any kind of 
 reserve whatever. In my own education I went through the most 
 complete course of instruction in the University of Edinburgh 
 without ever witnessing a single experiment on a living animal. It 
 has been my duty as a teacher to keep myself closely conversant 
 with the progress of physiology until within the last four years, and 
 up to that date I remained perfectly ignorant of any necessity for 
 vivisection as a means of instructing pupils, and I can find no 
 reason whatever for its introduction into English schools, save a 
 desire for imitating what has been witnessed on the Continent by 
 some of our most recent additions to physiological teaching. In 
 Trinity College, Dublin, the practice has been wholly prevented, 
 and on a recent visit to that institution I could not find, after much 
 careful inquiry, the slightest reason to believe that any detriment 
 was being inflicted upon the teaching or upon those taught. 
 
 Claims of Vivisection Denied. 
 
 The position of vivisection as a method of scientific research 
 stands alone amongst the infinite variety of roads for the discovery 
 of Nature's secrets as being open to strong prima facie objection. 
 No one can urge the slightest ground of objection against the 
 
4 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 astronomer, the chemist, the electrician, or the geologist in their 
 ways of working ; and the great commendation of all other workers 
 is the comparative certainty of their results. But for the physiolo- 
 gist, working upon a living animal, there are two strong objections : 
 that he is violating a strong and widespread public sentiment, and 
 that he tabulates results of the most uncertain and often quite 
 contradictory kind. 
 
 I do not propose to deal with the sentimental side of the 
 question at all, though no one can doubt it is a very strong element 
 in the case as maintained by public opinion. I shall deal simply 
 with the inquiry: Has this method of scientific research — Vivisec- 
 tion — contributed so much to the relief of suffering or to the 
 advance of human knowledge as to justify its continuance in spite 
 of the manifest objections to it .? My own answer I shall try to 
 give in the following pnges, merely premising that an answer to 
 justify vivisection must be clear and decisive, must be free from 
 doubt of any kind, and, above all, it must not assume the protection 
 of a " privileged mystery." This is a question, I maintain, which 
 can be discussed by an educated layman just as well, perhaps 
 better, than by a physician or a surgeon or a professional physiolo- 
 gist. It is a question chiefly of historical criticism, and we must 
 have a conclusive answer concerning each advance which is quoted 
 as an instance, how much of it has been due to vivisectional 
 experiment and how much to other sources, and this amount must be 
 clearly and accurately ascertained. It will not do, as has been the 
 case in many of the arguments, to draw such a picture as that of an 
 amputation in the seventeenth century and one performed last year, 
 and say that the change is due to vivisection. We might just as 
 well point to the prisons of the Inquisition and then to one of our 
 present convict establishments and claim all the credit of the 
 change for the fact that our judges wear wigs. The real questions 
 are : What advances in detail are due to vivisection ? Could these 
 advances have been made without vivisection.? If vivisection 
 was necessary for elementary and primitive research is it any 
 longer necessary, seeing that we have such splendid and rapidly- 
 developing methods in hundreds of other directions? Have we 
 made complete and exhaustive use of all other valuable methods, 
 not open to objection ? And finally, are the advances based upon 
 vivisection of animals capable of being adapted conclusively for 
 mankind, for whose benefit they are professedly made ? 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 5 
 
 It must be perfectly clear that to answer all these questions 
 specific instances must be given, and that they must be analysed 
 historically with great care. This has already been done in many 
 instances, and I am bound to say, in every case known to me, to the 
 utter disestablishment of the claims of vivisection. 
 
 The Circulation of the Biood. 
 
 Take the case of the alleged discovery of the circulation of the 
 blood by Harvey, and it can be clearly shown that quite as 
 much as Harvey knew was known before his time, and that it is 
 only our insular pride which has claimed for him the merit of 
 the discovery. That he made any solid contribution to the facts of 
 the case by vivisection is conclusively disproved, and this was 
 practically admitted before the Commission by such good 
 authorities as Dr. Acland and Dr. Lauder-Brunton.* The 
 circulation was not proved till Malphigi used the microscope, and 
 though in that observation he used a vivisectional experiment his 
 proceeding was wholly unnecessary, for he could have better and 
 more easily have used the web of the frog's foot than its lung. It 
 is, moreover, perfectly clear, that were it incumbent on any one to 
 prove the circulation of the blood now as a new theme, it could not 
 be done by any vivisectional process, but could at once be 
 satisfactorily established by a dead body and an injecting syringe. 
 In fact, I think I might almost say that the systemic circulation 
 remained incompletely proved until the examination of injected 
 tissues by the microscope had been made. 
 
 But supposing we grant, for the sake of argument, that such an 
 important discovery had been made by vivisection, and by it alone, 
 there still remains the all-important question, Is it necessary to use 
 such mediaeval methods for modern research .'' No one can doubt 
 that the rude methods employed in Charles II.'s reign for obtaining 
 evidence — the rack, the boot, the thumb-screw, and the burning 
 match — were occasionally the means of accomplishing the ends of 
 justice, but need we go back to them now 1 The very necessity for 
 ending them brought into use fresh and far less fallible methods, 
 and I am inclined to make the claim for physiology, pathology, and 
 the practice of medicine and surgery that the very retention of this 
 cruel method of research is hindering real progress, that if utterly 
 stopped the result would certainly be the search for, and the finding 
 
 * See Appendix. 
 
6 THE USELESSNESS OE VIVISECTION. 
 
 of far better and more certain means of discovery. To urge its 
 continuance on the ground that it was useful in the seventeenth 
 century is just as reasonable as to ask the astronomer to go back to 
 the cumbrous tackle by which Huyghens first worked his lenses. 
 
 If the method of obtaining evidence by torture was occasionally 
 successful, there can be little doubt that as a rule it failed and led 
 the inquirers astray. So I say it has been with vivisection as a 
 method of research, it has constantly led those who have employed 
 it into altogether erroneous conclusions, and the records teem with 
 instances in which not only have animals been fruitlessly sacrificed, 
 but human lives have been added to the list of victims by reason of 
 its false light. 
 
 Those who have recently advocated vivisection seem to have 
 forgotten or to have ignored this most fatal objection, and as a rule 
 they have indulged in a line of argument which is little more than 
 assertion. For the purpose of this paper I have gone carefully over 
 a large mass of literature upon the subject, and find that the bulk 
 of it is altogether beyond criticism, because it does not deal with 
 fact. Thus in a recent address on the subject by Professor 
 Humphry, of Cambridge, there is a long list of advances in 
 medicine and surgery, every one of which is attributed to 
 vivisection solely because some experiments were mixed up in the 
 history of each instance ; but not an effort was made to show that 
 the advances were due to vivisection. The proper method for the 
 discussion of this subject is to take up a number of special 
 instances and to subject them to careful criticism, chiefly by 
 historical evidence, and as soon as the advocates of vivisection do 
 this successfully I am prepared to grant their case. But hitherto 
 they have failed. 
 
 Fevers and Drug^s. 
 
 Serial literature during the last few months has been singularly 
 fertile in articles on the question of vivisection, and one 
 commanding attention as an editorial is to be found in Nature of 
 March Qth. 
 
 There the a priori argument for vivisection is put in the familiar 
 illustration that " it would be more reasonable to hope to make out 
 the machinery of a watch by looking at it, than to hope to 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 7 
 
 understand the mechanism of a living animal by mere 
 contemplation." Unfortunately there is a fault in the analogy, and 
 it may be far more truly put in the converse, that it would be 
 wholly impossible to repair the damaged movements of a watch by 
 experimenting with an upright pendulum clock. There is a 
 perfectly parallel dissimilarity between the functions and the 
 diseases of animals and those of man. 
 
 In the same article is a quotation from the article of Sir William 
 Gull, to the effect that the experiments of Bernard, in baking living 
 dogs to death in an oven, have opened the way to our understanding 
 the pathology of fever. In zymotic diseases the elevated 
 temperature is not a cause of the disease but its consequence, and 
 the answer to the argument is that not a single contribution of any 
 kind has yet been made to the cure of scarlet fever. Its course 
 cannot be shortened by one hour. Medicine is powerless for the 
 cure of zymotics, whilst hygiene is all-powerful in their prevention, 
 and the medicine of the future lies wholly in this direction. Drugs 
 are impotent, but sanitary laws can and will banish all these 
 diseases, when they are completely understood and fulfilled. 
 
 The article continues that " between 1864 and 1867 seven new 
 drugs were added to the Pharmacopoeia, of which at least the two 
 most useful, carbolic acid and physostigma, are due to vivisection." 
 Upon the question of new drugs I can speak only with great 
 reserve, for such a wholesome scepticism concerning drugs has 
 been introduced by the medical schism of homoeopathy, that I look 
 upon all new drugs with great suspicion. Sir William Gull himself 
 says he has not much belief in drugs. I fear most new drugs do 
 more harm than good ; some of them, such as chloral, most 
 certainly have done so. I cannot learn that physostigma is of any 
 practical service, and I have shown in my published writings that 
 carbolic acid has done far more harm than good. Perhaps it would 
 have been better if we had never heard of it. The question of the 
 investigation of the actions of drugs by experiments on animals I 
 have to confess is a very difficult one, because after we have found 
 out what they do in one animal we find that in another the results 
 are wholly different, and the process of investigation has to be 
 repeated in man. Not only so, but in human individuals the 
 actions of drugs in very many cases vary so much, that each fresh 
 patient may form really a new research. Pharmacy forms. 
 
8 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 therefore, at least, a very shaky argument for vivisection. 
 
 Finally, the Editor of Nature deals with the argument of 
 proportion, which is stated to the effect that the proportion of pain 
 inflicted by vivisection bears but small ratio to the pain relieved by 
 the discoveries effected in that way. But if this question be 
 examined historically, as it must be for the sake of justness, it will 
 be found that the argument is all the other way. To take the case 
 of Ferrier's experiments, if the history of the point be examined, 
 even from the period of Saucerotte till now, the number of 
 experiments recorded is perfectly awful, and we can easily imagine 
 that many more were performed and not put on record. 
 Concerning the arteries this is still more true ; and it is, to say the 
 least of it, very doubtful if any permanent good has been done by 
 them. What we do really know about both of these matters with 
 certainty has been derived from the post-mortem examinations of 
 our failures in human subjects, and not from vivisection 
 experiments. 
 
 In a work published within the last few weeks by a distinguished 
 member of this Society, Dr. George Gore, entitled " The Scientific 
 Basis of National Progress," and at p. 8o, will be found the 
 following sentence : " The Antivivisection movement is but one of 
 the phases of the ever-existing conflict between the advancing and 
 retarding sections of mankind." 
 
 I do not know whether I belong to the antivivisection movement or 
 not, but I certainly cannot rank myself with those who attribute to 
 vivisection the merit which distinctly belongs to other causes. So 
 far I am an antivivisectionist most thoroughly. 
 
 Brain Surg^ery. 
 
 Similarly I do not know whether or not I am to be regarded as 
 belonging to the " retarding section of mankind." If I am so classed I 
 fear I shall be in company as strange to me as I shall be 
 objectionable to it. But my relief is great as I read further in Dr. 
 Gore's book and see upon what grounds he has built his conclusion. 
 I have never heard that Dr. Gore has conducted any vivisection 
 research himself, and therefore I assumed that he took his 
 argument from some other source. He was kind enough to give 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. g 
 
 me his reference for the following statement, which he makes at 
 page 8l : " Ferrier's comparatively recent vivisection experiments 
 have already enabled medical men to treat more successfully those 
 formidable diseases, epilepsy and abscess of the brain." His 
 authority is an anonymous article in the British Medical Journal 
 of November iQth, l88l, in which a series of cases is given in 
 support of this extraordinary statement. The purport of it is that 
 the experiments of Ferrier have led to greater certainty in applying 
 the trephine for the removal of depressed fractures, &c., which had 
 produced serious symptoms, or for the relief of matter in cerebral 
 abscesses. 
 
 I do not propose now to go into this very wide and difficult 
 question, because I shall have a fuller opportunity on another 
 occasion. I shall only say that Ferrier's first experiments were 
 published in 1873, and that previous to that time a large number of 
 cases are on record where the seat of injury was ascertained with 
 perfect accuracy by simpler and less misleading methods — in one 
 case by myself in 1868. The a priori difficulties in the application 
 of Ferrier's conclusions are enormous and, as it seems to me, 
 insuperable ; and, after a most careful historical consideration of 
 the illustration quoted by Dr. Gore, my verdict is most decidedly 
 that of not proven. 
 
 The application of the trephine for the treatment of epilepsy is 
 of course absolutely limited to cases where the disease is the result 
 of injury to the skull. No one has ever dreamed of applying it to 
 other cases. I find that the first operation of this kind was 
 performed in 1705, by Guillaume Mauquest de la Motte with partial 
 success, and it was repeated with complete success by Mr, Birch of 
 St. Thomas's Hospital, 1804. Between 1804 and 1865 there are 50 
 cases on record (collected by Dr. James Russell, British Medical 
 Journal, 1865), and of these 44 recovered, the results being 
 satisfactory in 39 of them. This paper of Dr. Russell's was 
 published years before any of Ferrier's experiments were 
 undertaken, and the results of trephining for epilepsy published 
 since are not so good as those published by Dr. Russell. The most 
 recent contribution to the subject is a paper by Mr. J. F. West, who 
 asks the question "Are our indications in any given case, either of 
 paralysis or epilepsy, sufficiently precise and well-marked to 
 warrant us in recommending the use of the trephine at a particular 
 
10 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 point of the skull? and he answers it thus: " It will be a long time 
 before it is definitely settled, but such cases as those alluded to give 
 encouragement." This answer of a practical surgeon is very 
 different from that of Dr. Gore. 
 
 Even if the conclusions which are attributed to Dr. Ferrier's 
 researches were to be regarded as indisputable, my answer would 
 be that they might have been arrived at, and certainly would soon 
 be enormously extended, if our clinical research were conducted 
 upon reasonable and scientific principles. The chief reason of the 
 slow advance of the arts of medicine and surgery is the reckless 
 waste of the material so plentifully supplied by disease, and the 
 first remedy will consist in the sub-division of the labour, a remedy 
 against which, unfortunately, the medical profession protests most 
 vigorously. 
 
 A Useless Method. 
 
 It is of course perfectly impossible to deal with all of the 
 illustrations in favour of vivisection which have recently been 
 advanced in the limits of an ordinary paper, and I prefer to take 
 those which deal with points of practical utility, rather than with 
 such as have as yet only a possibility of being useful in the future. 
 I shall deal, therefore, at present chiefly with the illustrations which 
 have been gathered from the field of practical medicine and surgery, 
 for in them, of course, the public see the strongest arguments. If 
 it is publicly announced, as has been done of late very widely, that 
 human diseases have been cured and human suffering lessened by 
 experiments on the lower animals, the public must therein see a 
 strong argument for vivisection. But such announcements are 
 open to the test of historical examination, and to this I propose to 
 subject the most important of them. I am equally open to discuss 
 in the same way those points of less apparent usefulness, the 
 matters of mere physiological discovery, on some future occasion, if 
 it should arise ; but, as with these the only defence can be that 
 some day they may prove of service, it is clearly best to deal first 
 with those for which an actual and not merely a potential utility is 
 claimed. 
 
 Those of my professional brethren who take the other side may 
 probably complain that I have selected a lay audience for the 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. Ii 
 
 discussion ; but the answer is, that by the circulation of pamphlets, 
 and by communicated paragraphs in newspapers, they have already 
 taken the initiative, and I am but meeting them on their own 
 ground. 
 
 I am quite well aware that I am one of a small minority of my 
 profession in my view that vivisection is useless as a method of 
 research, but the answer I am disposed to offer on this point is, that 
 not one in a hundred of my professional brethren have ever 
 seriously examined the question. Ninety-nine take for granted the 
 statements of the hundredth, and he, in turn, has not gone into the 
 the matter upon that side from which alone a safe answer can be 
 given — that of historical criticism. 
 
 The dispute, as I have already said, is not to be settled by mere 
 statement of opinion, one way or the other ; nor is it a question of 
 authority. On- the argument of authority a very singular answer 
 has been given by the supporters of vivisection in the case of the 
 late Sir William Fergusson, who stated in his evidence before the 
 Royal Commission that in his opinion nothing had been gained for 
 surgery by experiments on the lower animals — an opinion which I 
 entirely endorse. During his lifetime. Sir William Fergusson had 
 heaped upon him all the distinctions which his Queen, his country, 
 and his profession had it in their power to bestow. He was the 
 titular head of his profession, its most successful operator, one of 
 its greatest anatomists, its most widely employed practitioner, its 
 most successful teacher, the author of its principal text-book on 
 surgery — but now, when he is dead, we are told he was not a 
 scientific surgeon, because he did not believe in vivisection. 
 Nobody said this in his lifetime, and so late as 1873 he was elected 
 President of the British Medical Association, over all the 
 profoundly scientific surgeons of the Metropolis. I share Sir 
 William's opinions concerning vivisection, and I am quite content 
 to rank with him on that account as an unscientific surgeon. 
 
 A pamphlet has recently been published in this town on " The 
 Influence of Vivisection on Human Surgery," by Mr. Samson 
 Gamgee, in which the proposition is set forth that without 
 experiments on living animals " scientific surgery could not have 
 been founded, and its present humane and safe practice would have 
 been impossible." Mr. Gamgee supports this proposition by a 
 series of instances which we may presume are the best and 
 
12 THE USE LESS NESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 strongest he could find. These I tabulate as follows, and I shall 
 discuss them historically in this order. 
 
 I. Treatment of injuries of the head, and the theory of 
 Contre-coup. 
 II, Amputation of the Hip-joint. 
 
 III. Paracentesis Thoracis. 
 
 IV. Sub-cutaneous Tenotomy. 
 
 V. Treatment of Aneurism, Ligature, and Torsion of 
 
 Arteries. 
 
 VI. Transfusion. 
 
 VII. Abdominal Surgery. 
 
 VIII. Function of periosteum. 
 
 IX. The Ecraseur. 
 
 X. Detection of Poison. 
 
 1.— Injuries of the Head. 
 
 Mr. Gamgee tells us that the Academic de Chirurgie gave out 
 the subject of contre-coup, and its influence in injuries of the head, 
 as the subject for a prize competition, and that the prize was 
 obtained in 1778 by M. Saucerotte, whose essay was based " on 
 literary research, clinical observations, and twenty-one experiments 
 on living dogs."* He omits, however, to make any estimate of the 
 value of the experiments on the dogs, which seems to me to be 
 absolutely nothing ; and he quite forgets to mention that the theory 
 of contre-coup had been completely established for nearly two 
 centuries before, and had been particularly the subject of Paul 
 Ammannus of Leipsic, who wrote a well-known work, " De resonitu 
 seu contra fissura crannii," in 1674, in which trepanning is 
 recommended at the point of contre-coup, as had been practised by 
 Paul Barbette, of Amsterdam, thirteen years before that. The 
 theory of contre-coup, and the fatal practises arising from it, are 
 happily now buried in oblivion, in spite of Saucerotte's vivisection, 
 and would never again have been alluded to but for Mr. Gamgee's 
 unfortunate resurrection of them. 
 
 The modern verdict concerning fractures of the skull is given 
 tersely in Mr. Flint South's words, " the IcbS done as regards 
 meddling with them the better," and " a knowledge of counter- 
 fractures is quite uncertain." In fact nothing could be more 
 *Memoire sur less Contre-coups dans les Lesions de la Tete, par M. 
 Saucerotte (Couronne en 1768), Mem. Acad, de Chirurgie, torn. x. p. 327, 
 et seq. 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 13 
 
 unfortunate than the selection of M. Saucerotte's experiments as an 
 illustration of the value of vivisection, for they were performed for 
 a purpose which was long ago recognised as futile, and in support 
 of a practice universally condemned. 
 
 M. Saucerotte says — " Pour etablir le diagnostic des lesions des 
 differentes parties du viscere, j'ai cru devoir prendre la voie de 
 I'experience et de I'observation. Ce ne sont point ici des 
 consequences hasardees, ce sont les resultats de faits penibles, qui 
 formeront, a ce que j'espere, un foyer lumineux, dont les rayons 
 repondront le plus grand jour sur la pratique." He anticipated 
 many of Ferrier's experiments by more than a hundred years, and 
 when he trephined the skulls of dogs and injured their brains on 
 the right side, he found that they became somewhat feeble on their 
 left sides, and vice versa, a fact that had been establii;;hed by 
 pathology long before. His idea of imitating the injury of contre- 
 coup, was to pass a knife right through the substance of the brain, 
 till it impinged on the inner surface of the skull opposite the 
 trephine hole, a most absurd experiment, as the contre-coup injures 
 at the opposite surface only, and not necessarily at all the 
 intervening brain substance. 
 
 Reading his experiments, they seem so like Ferrier's that I 
 fancy if Dr. Ferrier had known of the existence of this essay he 
 would have found little need to repeat its work. 
 
 Many of the conclusions of Saucerotte's experiments are 
 eminently absurd, and, save that of the decussation of the fibres, 
 which was known before, I can find few that have been since 
 accepted, and those that have been he candidly avows were 
 previously observed in cases of disease. Finally, the conclusions 
 concerning treatment of injuries of the head which he draws from 
 his experiments are not such as would be listened to in modern 
 surgery, and it is certain that if they were ever acted upon they 
 must have had results almost uniformly disastrous. 
 
 The fact is, that the whole run of vivisectional experiments on the 
 brains of animals, now extending over hundreds of years, have given 
 no sort of assistance to the elucidation of the physiology of that 
 wonderful organ, so contradictory have been the results. On this 
 subject Dr. W. B. Carpenter, who curiously enough has recently 
 appeared as an ardent supporter of vivisection, says, in the seventh 
 edition of his standard work on the " Principles of Human 
 
14 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 Physiology," p. 645, " The results of partial mutilations are usually 
 in the first instance a general disturbance of the cerebral functions ; 
 which subsequently, however, more or less quickly subsides, leaving 
 but little apparent affection of the animal functions, except 
 muscular weakness. The whole of one hemisphere has been 
 removed in this way, without any evident consequence, save a 
 temporary feebleness of the limbs on the opposite side of the body, 
 and what was supposed to be a deficiency of sight through the 
 opposite eye.* * * So far as any inferences can be safely drawn 
 from them these experiments fully bear out the conclusion that the 
 cerebrum is the organ of Intelligence," a conclusion which surely 
 has never been doubted, since it was first the object of the then 
 savage club to destroy the intelligence of a foe by cracking his 
 skull. Continuing his researches on such experiments as those of 
 Saucerotte and Ferrier, Dr. Carpenter tersely sums up the prima 
 facie objections to them, objections which seem to him, as they 
 seem to me, to be fatal to their utility : "It is obvious that much of 
 the disturbance of the sensorial powers which is occasioned by this 
 operation is fairly attributable to the laying open of the cranial 
 cavity, to the disturbance of the normal vascular pressure, and to 
 the injury necessarily done to the parts which are left by their 
 severance from the cerebellum." Dr. Marshall Hall also pointed 
 out long ago that injury to the dura-mater is an important 
 factor in the results obtained. 
 
 II.— Amputation of the Hip Joint. 
 
 At page 8 of his pamphlet, Mr. Gamgee makes the astonishing 
 statement that this operation was onl}'^ attempted after it was 
 proved safe by vivisection. The authority he has been kind enough 
 to give me for this is a brief sentence in the preface to the ninth 
 volume of the " Memoires de I'Academie de Chirurgie," written by 
 the Secretary General and published in 1778. 
 
 But the first hint we get of amputation of the hip-joint is from a 
 German surgeon named Vohler, who was in practice about 1690. 
 It is doubtful if he ever performed it on a living patient, but it is on 
 record that he tried on the dead body. But it was performed by M. 
 la Croix, of Orleans, in 1748, not only on one limb, but on both 
 limbs of the same patient, the first operation being successful, and 
 the second almost so. This was nearly thirty years before the 
 publication of the vivisection of dogs ; and there are many other 
 cases of success previous to Mr. Gamgee's alleged origin of the 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 15 
 
 operation, one being by the celebrated Ker of Northampton, in 
 1773 ; and, as Mr. Gamgee has published a large book on 
 amputation of the hip-joint, it is surprising that he did not know 
 something more about the history of the operation. 
 
 III.— Paracentesis Thoracis. 
 
 Mr. Gamgee makes another most unfortunate selection in the 
 case of William Hewson, who based a theoretical operation for 
 pneumothorax upon experiments on living dogs and rabbits so long 
 ago as 1769. He made a wound in the side of the chest and 
 admitted air into the pleura, where no air ought to be, and then he 
 operated to get it out again. When such a condition is brought 
 about in man, and no vital organ seriously injured, the patient gets 
 perfectly well without any operation. I cannot learn that 
 Hewson's operation for the removal of air has ever been performed 
 on man. When pneumothorax occurs from disease it is generally 
 associated with conditions necessarily fatal, for which no operation 
 is advisable. On this point the greatest authority, Dr. Bowditch of 
 New York, says, '* I have operated once in pneumo-hydrothorax, 
 with temporary relief and comparative ease for several days. 
 Many theoretical objections may be urged against the operation in 
 such a case ; but as the operation can do no harm and may give 
 much relief, I shall operate again in such a case." The proceeding 
 is therefore doubtful, the conditions are extremely rare, pure 
 pneumothorax, such as Hewson invented his proceedings for, never 
 needs it, and therefore his experiments on living dogs and rabbits 
 were useless. 
 
 Finally, tapping for the removal of fluid in the chest was 
 practised long before Hewson's time, and therefore his research was 
 needless. Hewson really based his proposal on this well-known 
 practice, but in this he was anticipated in the most favourable cases 
 — those of wounds — for Anel, of Amsterdam, published quite the 
 same proposal in 1707, and it has been uniformly condemned by 
 every writer on military surgery since, because the removal of the 
 air merely induces bleeding.* Anel devised a syringe for the 
 purpose, which has been revived as the modern aspirator, f Had 
 Mr. Gamgee known anything of Dominic Anel he would never have 
 mentioned William Hewson. 
 
 * Flint South's edition of Chelms, vol. i p. 452. 
 
 tL'Art de Sucer les Plaies sans se servir de la bouche d'un homme. 
 Amsterdam, 1707. 
 
I6 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 IV.— Subcutaneous Tenotomy. 
 
 I have traced the history of the surgery of tendons, and I cannot 
 see the slightest reason to attribute any of the advances in this 
 department to the alleged vivisections of John Hunter. I cannot 
 find any record of these experiments, beyond the allusions to them 
 by Drewry Ottley, and Palmer in his life of Hunter. 
 
 The same accident which happened to Hunter in 1767 happened 
 to the first Monro in 1726, and from the latter instance a very 
 marked advance in surgical practice was at once made and a 
 contrivance invented by Monro himself, for his own case is still in 
 use and goes by his name. No such advance was made from 
 Hunter's accident or from his vivisections. In their histories of the 
 progress of orthopoedic surgery Little and Adams make no such 
 claim for Hunter. Adams points out clearly, and with justice, that 
 Hunter established the principles on which subcutaneous surgery is 
 now conducted ; but these he established from clinical observations, 
 not from experiments upon animals. And in his lecture on 
 " Ruptural Tendons " (vol. i. p. 436), Hunter says not one word about 
 his vivisections, or any conclusions he derived from them as to the 
 method of repair of tendons. If he ever made any such experiments 
 he must have placed very little value upon them. 
 
 If we trace the development of tenotomy we find that Hunter's 
 experiments had no influence upon it at all. They were performed, 
 it is said, in 1767. But the first tenotomy was not performed till 
 1784, by Lorenz, at Frankfort, and then the conditions were 
 absolutely in defiance of the principals of subcutaneous surgery. 
 It was done by an open wound, and this practice was continued with 
 hardly any modification till far on in this century. In fact, as Adams 
 points out, it is from 1831 that the commencement of scientific 
 tenotomy dates, at the hands of Stromeyer. If this is so, and Adams 
 makes his case out most conclusively (Club-Foot, 1873), how utterly 
 useless Hunter's experiments on dogs must have been, to lie 
 forgotten and unnoticed till unearthed in Mr. Gamgee's pamphlet of 
 1882, one hundred and fifteen years after they were performed ; or 
 how singularly careless and inattentive to the teachings of 
 vivisection the medical profession must be, that they should allow 
 this immense discovery to lie neglected from 1767 till 1831. 
 
 To bring forward so rash an illustration as this for the value of 
 vivisection is to cast a terrible slur at the profession of surgery, a 
 slur which I do not think at all deserved if the true history of such 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 17 
 
 advances is carefully investigated, and the moving causes of them 
 properly credited. 
 
 v.— Treatment of Aneurism, Ligature, and 
 Torsion of Arteries. 
 
 Mr. Gamgee alludes to the oft-quoted story of the Hunterian 
 operation for aneurism as a proof of the aid vivisection has given to 
 surgery. This illustration has been so , completely and so often 
 destroyed, that it is absolutely unnecessary to allude to it further 
 than to explain that Hunter modified Anei's operation merely 
 because he found the artery near to the seat of disease would not 
 hold the ligature, and the patients bled to death. As the arteries of 
 animals never suffer from the disease in question, experiments upon 
 them could not have helped Hunter in any way whatever. Sir James 
 Paget, who has lately appeared as an ardent advocate for vivisection, 
 and, therefore, may be appealed to by me as a witness not biassed to 
 my view, has recorded his opinion in the Hunterian oration given at 
 the College of Surgeons in 1877, that Hunter's improvement in the 
 treatment of aneurism " was not the result of any laborious 
 physiological induction ; it was mainly derived from facts very 
 cautiously observed in the wards and deadhouse." In this opinion 
 Sir James Paget is undoubtedly correct. 
 
 Concerning the tying and torsion of arteries I am in a position 
 to speak with some authority, because I have myself performed 
 experiments on living animals, and have tound how futile they are, 
 and how uncertain and untrustworthy are their results. Mr. 
 Gamgee tells us that some local worthies, who were distinguished 
 by early performances of serious operations, practised their 'prentice 
 hands on living animals. This is not scientifie experimentation, but 
 culpable and wholly unnecessary cruelty. It is on the dissecting 
 table that a surgeon prepares his hand for his work, and not on the 
 bodies of living animals. I have never known nor heard of such an 
 instance before, and I trust there are no more to be quoted. Any 
 surgeon who did this now would, I am sure, receive a universal 
 condemnation from his professional brethren. 
 
 Mr. Gamgee quotes Jones's experiments on the arteries of 
 animals as an instance of a valuable contribution to surgical 
 progress by experiments on animals, and I do not think any more 
 complete illustration could be quoted in support of the uselessness 
 of vivisection as a method of scientific research than that of 
 
18 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 the history of the physiological and pathological processes to be 
 observed in arteries. If we consider the question from what some 
 would call the purely scientific side, that is apart altogether from 
 any practical bearings it may have for the relief of human sufferings 
 and the care of human disease, it consists merely of a mass of 
 observations in which each observer contradicts some other. Upon 
 this subject I wrote as follows so long ago as 1865 : — 
 
 "John Hunter warned surgeons to avoid injuring any of the 
 coats of an artery, and to this effect advised that the ligature should 
 not be drawn so tight as to cut them ; while many of his contem- 
 poraries and successors dreaded any injuries so much that they used 
 all sorts of clumsy contrivances to avoid it — such as pads of lint and 
 bits of cork inserted between the arteries and ligature. Again, 
 Travers, in his experiments on ligatures of arteries, demonstrated 
 that Jones was quite wrong when he insisted that it was necessary 
 to divide the inner coats ; and Mr. Dalrymple, of Norwich, proved 
 by his experiments that while simple and continued contact of the 
 parietes of a vessel, without the slightest wound of any of the coats, 
 was sufficient to produce permanent adhesion and obliteration, yet 
 that division of the internal and middle coats without continued 
 coaptation invariably failed to produce adhesion. Hodgson says 
 that he cannot substantiate Jones's statement that division of the 
 coats is essential, and strongly supports the opinion that coaptation 
 of the walls, without rupture of any of the coats, will produce 
 occlusion. The theories of Dr. Jones were strongly supported by 
 Professor Thompson, his teacher, but were strongly opposed by Sir 
 Phillip Crampton, who insisted that the division of the coats not 
 only was unnecessary, but that it frequently defeats its own object." 
 — (Medical Times and Gazette, 1865.) 
 
 I quote this at length to show that fifteen years ago I found 
 authorities differing so much on this scientific question that I 
 thought it advisible to institute a new series of vivisectional 
 experiments to decide it. The experiments performed by myself 
 only added to the confusion, though nobody saw that at the time. 
 What we were working at was to get quit of the ligature altogether, 
 and to secure arteries by temporary compression of some kind 
 without injuring the coats. Acupressure promised to accomplish 
 this ; but it failed, for reasons I need not enter into here. The desire 
 to get quit of the ligature was due to the fact that after a vessel was 
 tied one end of the ligature was cut off and the other left hanging 
 out of the wound, where it remained for weeks, sometimes for 
 months, and occasionally (as in Lord Nelson's case) for years. 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 19 
 
 The amazing thing is that with all the experiments made upon 
 animals nobody ever thought of cutting both ends of the ligature 
 quite short and closing the wound over it. As a matter of fact, 
 from the time of Ambrose Pare to that of Simpson, an interval of 
 over 300 years, we went bungling on with experiments on animals 
 when the whole thing lay clear before us. It was the successful 
 experiments of Baker Brown and Thomas Keith upon women suffering 
 from ovarian tumours which showed us that if we use pure silk, cut 
 the ends of the ligatures short, and close the wound carefully over 
 them, success will be certain. Yet, not content with this, we hear of 
 fresh experiments on animals with carbolised catgut, chromicised 
 catgut, kangaroo tendons and other novelties, which speedily die out 
 when applied to human beings. 
 
 In the case of the arteries, therefore, experimentation on animals 
 has proved to be " science, falsely so-called." What we have done 
 in this direction is entirely the result of clinical experience, and that 
 only. 
 
 VL— Transfusion. 
 
 This operation was not initiated, as asserted by Mr. Gamgee, in 
 the second half of the seventeenth century by Dr. Lower, of Oxford, 
 nor was it first proposed as a legitimate surgical operation at all. 
 It was proposed, and in all probability was really practised, by the 
 alchemists of the sixteenth century as an attempt to obtain for the 
 wealthy aged a renewal of their lease of life, after the theory and 
 legend of Faustus. Certain it is that allusions to it are frequent, 
 though the first actual account of its performance is given by 
 Andre Libavius, Professor of Medicine at Halle (Helmst. 1602), as 
 having been performed by him in 1594, the blood of a young healthy 
 man being transfused into a man aged and decrepit, but able and 
 willing to pay for the supposed advantage. In the early part of the 
 seventeenth century it was a good deal discussed from this point of 
 view, forgotten for a while, and then after the Restoration it was 
 reconsidered, and a great deal written about it in this country and 
 on the Continent. An extremely interesting allusion to the 
 experiments is to be found in the wonderful Diary of Samuel 
 Pepys : — 
 
 " November 14th, 1666. — Dr. Croone told me that at the 
 Meeting at Gresham College to-night (which it seems, they now 
 have every Wednesday again) there was a pretty experiment of the 
 blood of one dog let out (till he died) into the body of another on 
 
20 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 one side, while all his own run out on the other side. The first 
 died upon the place, and the other is very well, and likely to do well. 
 This did give occasion to many pretty wishes, as of the blood of a 
 Quaker to be let into an Archbishop, and such like; but, as Dr. 
 Croone says, may, if it takes, be of mighty use to man's health, for 
 the amending of bad blood by borrowing from a better body." 
 
 " l6th. — This noon I met with Mr. Hooke, and he tells me the 
 dog which was filled with another dog's blood at the College the 
 other day is very well, and like to be so as ever, and doubt not it's 
 being found of great use to men, and so does Dr. Whistler, who 
 dined with us at the Tavern." 
 
 The scheme of transfusion in all the experiments of the seven- 
 teenth century, descriptions of which I have seen, was to take 
 arterial blood from an animal and pass it into the veins of another, 
 and that this was successful is not surprising. But this has never 
 been attempted in modern times upon man. It certainly would not 
 be justifiable ; because, to interfere with a large artery — and a large 
 artery would be required — in a man is always an extremely risky 
 thing. Dr. Lower, who is Mr. Gamgee's authority, in 1667 injected 
 or tried to inject arterial blood from a lamb into a man, but the 
 operation was so badly done that I do not believe any blood really 
 passed. If Pepys' idea could have been carried out, of transferring 
 some of the peaceful blood from the arteries of a member of the 
 Society of Friends, for the replacement of the turbulent and brutal 
 spirit of Archbishop Laud, some good might have been done, much 
 of the terrible history of that time need not have been written, and I 
 might not have appeared here as a critic of such experiments. But 
 no such or any other good result was obtained. A large army of 
 experimenters rushed into the field, a fierce controversy took place ; 
 but before the eighteenth century dawned the whole thing was 
 discredited and forgotten. Mr. Flint Smith gives a succinct history 
 of the matter, and tells us that it was revived by the plan of mediate 
 transfusion in the early part of the present century. The former 
 experiments were fruitlessly repeated and others tried. The result 
 is that the operation has a very insecure hold on professional 
 opinion. I have seen it performed seven times without success in 
 a single instance. I have twice been asked to do it, and have 
 declined, and both patients are now alive and well. We hear a 
 great deal of cases in which patients have survived after transfusion 
 has been performed, but we hear little or nothing of its failures. 
 Personally, I have no confidence in the proceeding. 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 21 
 
 VII.— Abdominal Surgery. 
 
 Mr. Gamgee aludes to a vivisection experiment made by John 
 Shipton, and published in 1703, as having laid the foundation for 
 the recent advances of abdominal surgery, which are attracting the 
 admiration of the whole professional world, and the instances he 
 quotes date so late as 1 880. If Shipton's experiment has been so 
 fertile, why has the crop been delayed for a hundred and seventy- 
 seven years ? 
 
 But even here Mr. Gamgee is wrong in his history. The whole 
 progress of abdominal surgery dates from the first successful case 
 of ovariotomy performed by Robert Houston in 1701. Failing to 
 see the lesson taught by this, and led astray by vivisection, no 
 further success was achieved till 1809, by Ephraim McDowell, and it 
 was not till 1867 that any substantial gain was made. Disregarding 
 all the conclusions of experiment, Baker Brown showed us how to 
 bring our mortality of ovariotomy down to 10 per cent. ; and again, 
 in 1876, Keith proved that it might be still further reduced. The 
 methods of this reduction were such as only experience on human 
 patients could indicate ; experiments on animals could and did teach 
 nothing, for operations have been performed on thousands of 
 animals every year for centuries, and nothing whatever has been 
 learnt from this wholesale vivisection. 
 
 As soon as Keith's results were established abdominal surgery 
 advanced so rapidly that now, only six years after, there is not a 
 single organ in the abdomen that has not had numerous operations 
 performed upon it successfully. I have had, as is well known, some 
 share in this advance, and I say, without hesitation, that I have 
 been led astray again and again by the published results of 
 experiments on animals, and I have had to discard them entirely. 
 
 Speaking on some recent attempts which have been made to 
 operate on cases of cancer of the stomach, Mr. Gamgee says : 
 "Warranting, as such cases do, the placing of cancer of the 
 stomach amongst diseases curable by the knife, do they not also 
 justify the vivisection of dogs by Shipton and Travers, who, by 
 their experiments, laid the first scientific foundation of intra- 
 abdominal surgery ? " Such a statement as this must be so 
 completely qualified as to be regarded as altogether inaccurate. 
 No form of cancer is yet known ever to have been cured, either by 
 operation or anything else. If removed it invariably returns, and in 
 all these cases of cancer of the stomach quoted by Mr. Gamgee, save 
 
22 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 one, the disease speedily returned and killed the patients. The one 
 exception has not yet been under trial long enough lo enable us to 
 give an opinion. Doubtless it will have the same end as the others. 
 
 VIII.— Function of Periosteum. 
 
 The history of the development of our knowledge of the formation 
 and growth of bone is extremely interesting, because it shows how 
 completely misleading are the conclusions based upon vivisectional 
 experiments, and how perfectly the secrets of Nature may be 
 unravelled by a careful and intelligent examination of her own 
 experiments. No one can look now at a necrosed bone without 
 seeing how completely the whole story is there written. The history 
 also exemplifies the fact that it is not only the purely practical 
 details of surgery which are independent of vivisection for their 
 development, but what are called the more scientific developments 
 of physiological knowledge are equally possible without its aid, and 
 are often retarded by its misguidance. 
 
 The first real observer in this department was Jean Guichard 
 Duverney, born in 1648, who achieved such distinction that Peyer, 
 in a dedicatory epistle, says to him, " Sempiterna te (Duverneyum) 
 quondam trophoea manebunt et Regi vestro, Academias Urbique 
 gloriosum erit tantum aluisse civem." He studied closely, and 
 wrote a great deal about the anatomy, physiology, and surgery of 
 bones, and in his books* he fully describes the method of growth 
 and ossification of bone, its dependence for its nutrition and growth 
 upon the periosteum ; the only thing he lacks is the microscopical 
 knowledge of modern times. He also performed vivisections, not 
 upon the periosteum but on the medulla, and they led him into 
 erroneous conclusions. He cut through the thigh bone of a living 
 animal, and repeatedly plunged a stilette into the medulla, and the 
 animal gave evidence of great suffering. The marrow, he therefore 
 concluded, received a great number of nerves, which passed through 
 the canals in the bone, but which existed only in his imagination. 
 As long as he kept to his clinical observations and anatomical 
 dissections he reached exact conclusions, but as soon as he entered 
 the arena of vivisection he went all astray. 
 
 The next author of note was Francois Hunauld, born in l/OI, 
 who published in 1730 " Recherches Anatomique sur les Os du 
 crane de I'homme," in which he describes with the utmost accuracy 
 ♦Traite des Maladies des Os, 1751, Paris. QLuvres Anatomiques, Paris, 1761, 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 23 
 
 the ossification by the membranes, between which the cranial bones 
 are developed. The only errors he made were hypothetical 
 descriptions of things he could not have seen without a microscope, 
 and that he evidently had not used. 
 
 Next comes Robert Nesbit, a Scotch surgeon, settled in London, 
 who published in 1736 an essay, entitled " Human Osteogeny, 
 explained in two lectures." 
 
 He was the first to demonstrate the construction of bone by the 
 now familiar experiment of dissolving out the mineral matter, and 
 leaving, as he most accurately says, a spongy substance altogether 
 different from cartilage. Cartilage he referred to its proper function ; 
 but he describes it as vascular, in this showing the want of 
 microscopical investigation ; but concerning the process of 
 ossification he had got quite as far as we have at the present day. 
 He tells us that in the blood, or in a liquid separated from it, there 
 is an ossifying fluid, a fluid containing the material out of which 
 bone is built up, composed of parts which are not sensible ; that 
 whenever Nature determines upon an ossification within a 
 membrane, from which all bones are developed, or in a cartilage, 
 she directs by some means, the nature of which we are ignorant of, 
 a larger quantity of blood to the vessels of the membranes, so that 
 they become distended and visible, whereas before they were 
 invisible. He describes the process of ossification only with such 
 errors as are due to the absence of the microscope, and says : " Thus 
 the membranes (periosteum) and the cartilages are the reservoirs in 
 which the osseous particles are deposited and moulded." He denied 
 the existence (and quite correctly) of an internal periosteum which 
 had become about that time a matter of great contention. 
 
 The celebrated discovery of the property of madder for staining 
 growing bone, when used as food by animals, was published by 
 John Belchier in the Philosophical Transactions for 1736, and he 
 fully disclosed thereby the method of growth of bone from 
 periosteum, and many other most interesting and valuable 
 discoveries concerning bone. 
 
 Between 1739 and 1743 Henri Louis Dunamel-Dumonceau 
 published eight memoirs on the growth and repair of bones, largely 
 based on the suggestive discovery of Belchier. Up to this time the 
 formation of callus was thought to be due to an effusion of osseous 
 juice — a belief which pervaded the surgical teaching of a 
 distinguished professor of the University of Edinburgh so late as 
 
24 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 my own student days — but Duhamel proved its real origin. He 
 also completely established the fact that bones grow in thickness by 
 the addition of osseous layers originating from the periosteum. 
 
 Duhamel performed many vivisections, but it is quite clear from 
 his own descriptions that they were failures and did not help him. 
 He says himself that his conclusions were based on sections which 
 he made of specimens of fractures which were in the collections of 
 Winslow, Moraud, and Hunauld. In fact, to any intelligent 
 observer who looks at a preparation of necrosis it is evident that no 
 vivisection was needed to show the whole process and growth of 
 repairs of bone ; and, even if vivisection were necessary, history 
 displays with certainty that Syme and Oilier, to whom Mr. Gamgee 
 attributes the merit of these discoveries, were only uselessly 
 repeating the attempts of Duhamel more than a century old, and 
 were only attempting to establish what had long before proved. 
 
 Since Duhamel's time thousands upon thousands of experiments 
 upon animals are on record, some to prove that the periosteum has 
 nothing whatever to do with the formation of bone or with the 
 production of callus, and others to prove that we owe everything 
 to the periosteum, and yet it has been settled absolutely only by the 
 experiments of disease upon our own bodies, and not by experiments 
 on animals. It would be really amusing to read the account of the 
 researches of Sue, Bordenave, Delius, Dethleef, Fongerous, Haller, 
 and countless others, were not the humour of their mutual 
 contradictions sadly marred by the accounts of the tortures they 
 inflicted uselessly on myriads of animals. 
 
 The experiments of Dethleef of Gottingen in 1752 were far 
 more scientific than those of Mr. Syme in 1837, and the conclusions 
 of both seem to me to be equally erroneous. At any rate Mr. Syme 
 did not help us one bit in advance ol Duhamel and Fongeroux. 
 Haller made numerous vivisectional experiments, and he was 
 the most distinguished physiologist of his time, yet he 
 records his conclusion that the periosteum has nothing whatever to 
 do with the formation of bone, and as a proof of this he quotes the 
 formation of exostoses on teeth. The fact is, that as long as 
 dependence was placed on vivisection, so long did one experimenter 
 investigate after another fruitlessly, and with conclusions absolutely 
 contradictory. On pathological research alone has the true conclusion 
 been established. Haller made a long series of vivisectional 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 25 
 
 experiments, published in two memoirs,* and triumphantly proved 
 that the periosteum can have nothing to do with the formation of 
 bone. He concluded from his vast array of experiments that bone 
 grew from the middle and not from the outside, together with many 
 other absurdities, only to be matched in the modern researches of 
 Bennett and Rutherford on the function of the liver, also based on 
 fallacious vivisections. 
 
 The whole of the physiology and pathology of bone have been 
 laid bare by the accident of the pigs of the dyer with whom Belchier 
 dined, by microscopic research, and the observations of disease. Yet 
 Hunter and Stanley thought it necessary to confirm the conclusions 
 of the madder stain by such a clumsy device as fixing a ring of 
 metal round the growing bones of a young animal, letting the ring 
 remain for months or years, and then examining to find — what? 
 absolutely nothing, save that the ring had been more or less covered, 
 just as it would have been on a tree, thus only repeating Duhamel's 
 conclusions. Other observers bored holes in bones and filled them 
 with metal plugs and shot to find only that the conclusions of 
 disease, that long bones grow from the epiphyses, is absolutely 
 correct. Then we come to Mr. Syme's paper in 1837, " On the 
 power of the periosteum to produce new bone." Mr. Syme almost 
 every week was in the habit of cutting through great thicknesses of 
 new bone attached to and growing from the periosteum to get at 
 dead old bone from which the periosteum had been separated ; and 
 the new bone, being between the periosteum and the old bone, must 
 of necessity have grown from the periosteum ; there was nothing else 
 it could grow from. Therefore, If Mr. Syme found it necessary to 
 cut up animals to find out what was constantly staring him in the 
 face, he was a profoundly unscientific surgeon, whose researches 
 were as badly conducted as they were useless. 
 
 When Mr. Gamgee read his paper at the local Medical Society 
 and quoted these experiments of Mr. Syme, I said that, as far as I 
 could recollect, the fact was that their conclusions had been 
 absolutely upset by Mr. Goodsir, who did not make experiments 
 upon animals, but followed a far more scientific method of research 
 — microscopic examination. On refreshing my memory I find this 
 is the case. In a paper read before the Royal Society of 
 Edinburghf in answer to Mr. Syme, Mr. Goodsir shows that Mr. 
 
 * Sur la Formation des Os, Causanne, 1758, 
 t Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xiv. 
 
26 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 Syme's method of research was so bad that the experiments could 
 not be performed accurately. Mr. Syme was pre-eminently an 
 unscientific surgeon, for he knew nothing of the microscope; in fact 
 it may be doubted if he ever looked through one. Mr. Goodsir, on 
 the contrary, may be looked upon as the father of modern 
 histological research. He proves conclusively that Mr. Syme's 
 experiments were absurd in their conception and futile in their 
 application. Mr. Goodsir's conclusions are, on the cantrary, 
 uniformly accepted, and as to his method he says that they were 
 made upon the shafts of human bones which had died,— museum 
 specimens, just as Duhamel's were. They showed that whilst fhe 
 periosteum is the matrix and machine by which the new bone is 
 made, the real agency is in the layer of osteal cells, and so he 
 finally solved the riddle. He did this by microscopic and patho- 
 logical research. He condemned the employment of vivisection as 
 useless and misleading, and to him we owe the completion of 
 Belcher's and Duhamel's research — a completion which was 
 hindered for a century by the blunders of vivisectionists. 
 
 After this I need not stop to discuss the useless repetition of 
 of Mr. Syme's experiments, with variations of Oilier of Lyons, for 
 it would be merely a waste of time. 
 
 IX.— The Ecraseur. 
 
 Mr. Gamgee quotes the introduction of the ecraseur as an 
 instance of the influence of vivisection on the process of human 
 surgery. No more unfortunate instance could be quoted. The 
 principle of the instrument is that it crushes and tears the tissues 
 instead of cutting them as by the knife. The surgical aphorism 
 that " torn arteries don't bleed " was in existence long before M. 
 Chassaignac was born, and if he had based his employment on that 
 alone he could have done all that his instrument has effected. 
 But unfortunately he performed experiments upon animals, and 
 immediately he was led astray. I once saw the leg of a favourite 
 dog amputated at the hip-joint on account of disease, and when the 
 limb was removed not a single vessel bled, and the main artery 
 was tied only as a matter of precaution. In the human subject I 
 have seen twelve or fifteen arteries tied in the same operation, for 
 with us the smallest arteries bleed and require to be secured. Our 
 arteries act in ways altogether different from those seen in the 
 lower animals. Their patholgy and physiology are absolutely 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 27 
 
 different, as may be seen in the frequency of apoplexy and 
 aneurism with us, and the almost complete immunity from them of 
 all the lower animals, even in extreme old age. Hunter tried his 
 best to induce aneurism to the lower animals and failed. Injuries 
 to arteries in the lower animals are repaired with the utmost 
 certainty and readiness, but in man it is altogether different. It 
 may be easily imagined, therefore, that M. Chassaignac's applica- 
 tion of the ecraseur to the lower animals was found wholly 
 misleading when man was the subject, and now in human surgery its 
 utility is extremely limited ; that is, it is entirely confined to 
 operations where only very small arteries are divided. Speaking 
 for my own practice, I may say that it might be dispensed with 
 and never missed. 
 
 Mr. Gamgee's quotation of its application to the ovarian 
 arteries of the cow is peculiarly unfortunate, seeing that when it 
 was used for the same purpose in the human subject it had speedily 
 to be given up on account of its failure. 
 
 X. — Detection of Poison. 
 
 A great deal has been made of the successful experiments 
 recently performed by the medical experts for the conviction of 
 Lamson, for that worst of all crimes, the most unpardonable, 
 murder by poisoning. At first sight this does seem a case in which 
 experiments upon animals may be justified. Certainly anything 
 and everything ought to be done to convict a poisoner, and if 
 nothing short of that would do, I would advocate the performance 
 of a hecatomb rather than that such a scoundrel as Lamson should 
 escape. So late as a few weeks ago I made a reservation on this 
 point in my condemnation of vivisection as a method of research, 
 but it seems to me, from a closer consideration of the facts of the 
 case, that it form's really a very strong argument for the complete 
 abolition of vivisection, and, at the same time, unfortunately it is a 
 matter of grave reproach to modern science. 
 
 Fortunately the conviction of a poisoner is almost certain. If 
 he is not a doctor he commits the crime so clumsily that he cannot 
 escape. If he is a doctor he must have an interest in the victim's 
 death, is almost certain to be in pecuniary difficulties, and is sure to 
 have had a bad character previous to his great crime. The only 
 •difficulty lies in the proof of the presence of the poison. With all 
 poisons but the alkaloids this is a matter of such ease that failure 
 
28 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 is impossible, and as the alkaloids are almost exclusively in the 
 hands of chemists and doctors the limitation of their use is very- 
 close. 
 
 The most notorious case in which an alkaloid was used, or 
 supposed to have been used, by a poisoner was that of Parsons 
 Cook. The alkaloid was supposed to be strychnine, and I say 
 supposed, because I rise from the perusal of that trial with much 
 doubt as to whether Parsons Cook really died of strychnine 
 poisoning. Certainly I cannot accept it as proved, and I think if 
 the trial were to occur now the same evidence which convicted 
 Palmer would probably break down. I am perfectly satisfied, how- 
 ever, that Palmer received substantial justice. 
 
 In Palmer's case the principal witnesses for the prosecution 
 were the late Dr. Alfred Swayne Taylor, and the late Sir Robert 
 Christison, certainly the greatest toxicologists of this century. 
 Strychnine was not discovered in the body of Cook, and Dr. Taylor 
 had to admit that the best tests then known were insufficient to 
 discover one fiftieth of a grain, and that even half a grain might 
 remain undetected amongst food in the stomach. Palmer was 
 sentenced to death upon the 27th of May, 1856, and in July of the 
 same year a method of chemical analysis was published by 
 Copney in the Pharmaceutical Journal, by which one five hundred 
 thousandth of a grain of strychnine could be detected with certainty 
 after separation. In his evidence Dr. Taylor admitted that the 
 experiments he had performed upon animals with strychnine were 
 practically worthless for any application to man, and in the Royal 
 Commission of 1876 he condemned such experiments, particularly 
 those which are directed towards the discovery of an antidote to 
 snake bite. 
 
 Strychnine was discoverd in 1818, and was first used as a poison 
 in 183 1, and again in the case of Mrs. Sergison Smith in 1847, and 
 it was no new matter the toxologist had to do with in the trial 
 of Palmer. It must be regarded, therefore, as a matter for deep 
 regret that it was not till after the trial and execution of Palmer 
 that the chemistry of strychnine was exhaustively examined, and 
 definite and certain tests for it obtained. At the trial there was a 
 sort of competition among the vivisectionists, and Serjeant Shee 
 actually urged as an argument for the defence that his witnesses 
 had performed ten times more experiments to prove that there was 
 no strychnine, than the witnesses fur the prosecution had performed 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 29 
 
 to prove what never' was proved, that strychnine was used at all. 
 Yet in two months chemical processes were devised, without the 
 slightest aid from vivisection, which detected half-a-millionth of a 
 grain with certainty. 
 
 At the trial Professor Christison said that another alkaloid was 
 known, of a deadly poisonous character, which it was impossible to 
 detect, but under the judge's direction he refused to make its name 
 known. There were really many alkaloids of a deadly poisonous 
 character at that time quite well known, and aconitine was one. 
 The first case to bring this poison under notice as a criminal agent 
 was in 1841, and the notorious Pritchard destroyed his victims with 
 it in 1865. Dr. Penny, of Glasgow, resorted to experiments on 
 animals in order to bring the crime home to Pritchard, and 
 succeeded. Yet I have looked in vain for any record of a research 
 for a method which will detect aconitine with certainty by chemical 
 analysis, as strychnine can be detected, and Dr. Stephenson admitted 
 in evidence that there was no such test. 
 
 I daresay such a method will be shortly published, and what I 
 desire to point out is that this discovery ought to have been made 
 long ago in the interest of public safety, not only with regard to 
 aconitine, but with regard to many other alkaloids which may be 
 used in the same way, and which cannot be discriminated from 
 aconitine, even by experiments on animals. At present, when need 
 arises, we must go back to the uncertain method of experimenting 
 upon animals. But this is not science, if by that word we are to 
 speak of exact knowledge. The very weakness of this method has 
 led to a serious infraction of the principles of our judicial proceed- 
 ings, for the Home Secretary announced in the House of Commons 
 only a few nights ago that the Government, in a case such as 
 Lamson's, could not allow the proceedings of the medical experts 
 for the prosecution to be watched by other experts on behalf of the 
 defence. 
 
 This is altogether unfair, for with such an uncertain and incon- 
 clusive method as that of experimentation on animals two men, 
 even if appointed by the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, and 
 not by the Treasury, may be mistaken, whereas by chemical or 
 spectroscopic analysis mistakes are extremely unlikely, and the more 
 observers there are the better. 
 
 The general conclusion therefore is, that for such purposes 
 experiments on animals should be entirely prohibited, and that an 
 
30 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 exhaustive research should at once be undertaken at the expense 
 of the State, upon the spectrum and chemical analysis of all sub- 
 stances which may be used for criminal purposes. There is no 
 known substance of constant character which has resisted the 
 chemists' effort to identify it when it has been properly investigated. 
 
 If all these alkaloids had been subjected to an exhaustive 
 investigation as strychnine was after Palmer's trial, there would 
 have been no need to revert to vivisection in order to convict 
 Lamson, and I do not think it would now be contended as necessary 
 for the detection of a poisonous dose of strychnine that experiments 
 on animals should be made. Vivisection in this case is therefore 
 not the weapon of science, but is the refuge of incomplete work. 
 
 I have now gone over all the points urged in favour of vivi- 
 section as contributory to surgical advance as given in Mr. Gamgee's 
 pamphlet, and with the result, to my mind, of proving that in every 
 instance the claim is groundless. Had I time at my disposal I could 
 examine in detail numerous other claims equally fallacious. So far, 
 indeed, as I have already said, I have not met with a single case 
 capable of substantiation, not even the most recent — that of Pasteur's 
 discovery of the prevention of zymotic diseases in domesticated 
 animals by inoculation of cultivated virus. 
 
 From a Veterinary point of View. 
 
 In the Nineteenth Century for March will be found an article by 
 a well-known veterinary surgeon, Mr. Fleming, on this subject. He 
 describes the ravages of such diseases as anthrax, splenic fever, 
 rinderpest, swine plague, &c., among the animals which form our 
 food supply, and I admit the accuracy of his statements. Quite 
 recently M. Pasteur has discovered, and his statements have been 
 amply confirmed, *that the specific organisms which form the 
 
 *It must be remembered that Lawson Tait read this paper in 1882, before 
 he had freed himself from the influence of the tremendous wave of enthusiasm 
 with which I^asteur's work was at first received by the medical profession. 
 Later, he discarded his belief in Pasteur so thoroughly that he wrote to the 
 "Medical Press and Circular," May 1899, — "Such experiments (on animals) 
 never have succeeded and never can, and they have, as in the cases of Koch, 
 Pasteur and Lister, not only hindered true progress, but have covered our pro- 
 fession with ridicule." Whether his opinion of Jenner remained of the 
 orthodox and ignorant type to the end of his life we have no means of know- 
 ing ; it is probable that he never found time to study the subject of vaccination. 
 His remarks in this connection upon the true method of stamping out disease 
 show a far-sightedness which is very remarkable in one who had, nevertheless, 
 accepted the current theories, pending further inquiry. They show that he 
 was already on the right track, and the ultimate goal of that track is inevitable. 
 
THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 31 
 
 poisons of these diseases may be so artificially cultivated as to be 
 capable of producing by inoculation a mild form of the original 
 disease, which mild form is largely protective from the severe and 
 fatal form of the same malady. In fact there is a perfect analogy 
 between this discovery of Pasteur and that of Jenner. 
 
 The argument is that by their inoculation the zymotics of 
 domestic animals may be stamped out, and the claim is that it is a 
 great advance brought about by vivisection. But on a little exami- 
 nation it seems tp me that both argument and claim break completely 
 down. If it is really an advance from vivisection, then those who 
 benefit are the animals experimented upon, and that may be 
 legitimate enough — they at least would share largely in the benefit. 
 
 But the case must be examined from another side. There are 
 some twenty zymotics amongst our domestic animals to be provided 
 against. Are we to have each of them inoculated some ten or twelve 
 different times, each time for a different disease ? The affirmative 
 reply posesses a strong pecuniary interest for a veterinary surgeon, 
 but a practical man will only smile at it. 
 
 But, to go deeper into the question, we find another and a much 
 stronger objection. Such a process as protective inoculation must 
 always be an inefficient and a temporary measure. To take the case 
 of vaccination and small-pox, it is beyond dispute that vaccination 
 protects the individual to a large extent from small-pox, but it does 
 not protect the community — as may be seen from the ravages it is 
 making at the present time in neighbouring towns and counties. 
 The machinery of vaccination never can be so perfect as to stamp 
 out the disease, and it must be regarded purely as a temporary ex- 
 pedient. The real agent for the stamping-out of small-pox is the 
 machinery of a system of sanitary police, such as we have here ; and 
 even on the small scale in which we have had it for six years it has 
 worked marvels. It will stamp out not only small-pox but every 
 other zymotic at the same time, and by the same measures, and then 
 we need not trouble about vaccination — certainly it need not be com- 
 pulsory. 
 
 But the case is still stronger with the lower animals. With them, 
 as with us, civilisation has introduced zymotic poisons, which are 
 absolutely unknown to the wild animal, and the reasons are not far 
 to seek. In my capacity as one of the managers of a large public 
 institution, I had recently to investigate the cause of an epidemic of 
 swine plague, and I found a state of matters which had caused at 
 
32 THE USELESSNESS OF VIVISECTION. 
 
 the same time typhoid fever in a human patient. 
 
 Look at the arrangements of an ordinary British farmyard, and 
 then believe that it is a matter of no wonder that rinderpest destroys 
 the cattle, and diphtheria the farmer's children. The animals spend 
 their lives in houses not lighted and not ventilated, or walk about in 
 a mass of seething filth, on one side of which stands the farm 
 house, every room reeking with the stench of the cattle-yard. 
 
 When it begins to dawn on the mind of the British public that 
 all these diseases, both for man and animals, are; absolutely pre- 
 ventible by the simple means of securing fresh air, pure water, and 
 abundant light, they will be banished. Meantime inoculation may, 
 and probably will, prevent individuals being attacked, but it will not 
 stamp out the diseases, and it must be regarded as really a retrograde 
 proposal when we have in our hands the means of complete 
 prevention. 
 
 I hope I have thus made it clear that, deeply as I feel the 
 strength of the objection to the practice of vivisection upon the 
 various grounds I indicated at the beginning of my paper, I urge 
 against it a far stronger argument than these ; that it has proved 
 useless and misleading, and that in the interests of true science its 
 employment should be stopped, so that the energy and skill of 
 scientific investigators should be directed into better and safer 
 channels. I hail with satisfaction the rousing which is evident in the 
 public mind upon this question, and I feel confident that before long 
 the alteration of opinion, which I have had to confess in my own 
 case, will spread widely amongst the members of my useful 
 profession. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 *My attention has been drawn to a book whicb has just been published 
 under the title of " Physiological Cruelty : or, Fact v. Fancy, by Fhilanthropos." 
 This book purports to be a scientific contribution to the much-discussed question 
 of Vivisection, but its author departs from the usual custom of writers on 
 scientific subjects in that his book if anonymous. There is, I think, sufficient 
 evidence to reveal to any reader who is fairly well acquainted with the literature 
 of this question the identity of the author, and if it would serve any good 
 purpose I think I could name him. He is either ashamed of his book and his 
 cause, or he has a cowardly nature, and for the present I shall let him accept 
 which of the two stigmas he prefers. 
 
 He attacks me on several points, and I think it worth while to reply to him, 
 the more that one of the points of his criticism has been enlarged upon in a 
 paper by Mr. E. P. Copas, read before the Birmingham Philosophical Society on 
 June 21st, 1883. This paper, together with the remarks of " Philanthropes,'' 
 form the only adverse criticisms of my paper on the " Uselessness of Vivisection 
 as a Method of Scientific Research " which I have seen, though it is now fifteen 
 months since the paper was published. Mr. Copas did not make up his mind to 
 criticise me for more than a year after the publication of the pamphlet, and 
 after this long period of incubation his criticism was of the most trumpery kind. 
 It was to the effect that I had misrepresented Dr. Acland of Oxford, and 
 Dr. T. Lauder- Brunton, of London, when I said (p. 125) — " That Harvey made 
 any solid contribution to the facts of the case (the discovery of the circulation of 
 the blood) by Vivisection is conclusively disproved, and this was practically 
 admitted before the Commission by such good authorities as Br. Acland and Dr. 
 Lauder- Brunton. 
 
 I have italicised the words objected to by Mr. Copas, who is a Bachelor of 
 Arts of Oxford, and a Schoolmaster. His charge was, and it was supported by 
 letters he had received from Dr. Acland and Dr. Lauder- Brunton, that they had 
 made no such admission and entertained no such view. 
 
 It will be observed that I had cautiouslyused the words "practically admitted," 
 though I am of opinion that I might have used a very much stronger expression 
 and have said " actually admitted." Certainly this is the case with Dr. Acland. 
 
 The question of the discovery of the circulation of the blood has really 
 nothing to do with the question of vivisection. 
 
 In the first place it is denied by many (and I made the denial years before I 
 ever took part in the vivisection controversy) that the merit of this discovery is 
 to be credited to Harvey. There are at least two other claimants for it, and as 
 the elements of the controversy seem in every instance to be more in support of 
 national prestige than of individual merit, the discussion has become somewhat 
 farcical. But even if Harvey be admitted as the successful claimant there 
 remains the question, — Did he make anj' substantial contribution to his discovery 
 by means of vivisection ? and, if he did, does it follow that such a course of 
 experimentation as the one he pursued (without any definite purpose at all as it 
 seems to me) need be followed now ? To answer the second question first, and 
 dismiss it, every one must say, No, emphatically. The circulation of the blood 
 could neither be discovered nor demonstrated now by anything but a dead body 
 
and a sj'ringe. In fact the onlj' approach to satisfactory and scientific experi- 
 mentation which I find in Harvey's work on the circulation is given in a letter 
 to Paul Slegel, where he descrihes an experiment with a clyster bag on a dead 
 body. If he had pursued this line of research, and left living animals alone, he 
 would have anticipated many very important discoveries which have been made 
 since, and would have left no doubt whatever as to his claim to the establish- 
 ment of the scheme of the circulation. 
 
 To answer the second question, and to reply alike to Mr. Copas and 
 " Philanthropos," it is necessary to go carefully over the greater part of the 
 evidence published by the Royal Commission. The first four witnesses examined, 
 Sir Thomas Watson, Sir George Burrows, Sir James Paget, and Professor 
 Sharpey, went largely into the discoveries concerning the circulation alleged to 
 have been made by vivisection research, and (with the exception of Sir James 
 Paget) they all boldly claimed Harvey's alleged discovery as to the cbiefest 
 value. They gave their evidence on the 5th and 6th of July, 1875, and it may be 
 summed up in a sentence taken from the answer to question 304, by Professor 
 Sharpey : " Then Harvey, as every one knows, discovered the true motion of the 
 blood. That was by vivisection." A week elapsed, and by the 12th of July it 
 was discovered that this was a statement which might easily be disputed, and 
 could not be substantiated, and therefore Dr. Acland on the same point (991), in 
 answer to Lord Winmarleigh, said, " It is not quite certain what argumentation 
 led Harvey to that (the discovery of the circulation of the blood), whether it was 
 the observation of the living structure or the contemplation of the dead struc- 
 ture." Now I submit that on the part of Dr. Acland this answer is not only a 
 practical but an actual admission such as I have claimed. 
 
 In the work of "Philanthropos," at p. 146, that critic says : "With great care, 
 therefore, I turn to the proceedings of the Royal Commission, to seek for the 
 admission of the highly respectable authorities named (Dr. Acland and Dr. 
 Lauder- Brunton). And I find that neither of these gentlemen says one word on 
 the subject, or even indirectly refers to it." All I can say is, that in the copy 
 of the Report of the Royal Commission now before me, at page 47, there is the 
 admission of Dr. Acland which I have quoted. 
 
 Concerning Dr. Lauder- Brunton, the evidence is less direct, but to my mind it 
 is quite conclusive, and I adhere to my statement that he made " a practical 
 admission." Dr. Lauder-Brunton's name had been introduced specially in the 
 evidence concerning the circulation. After Dr. Acland's evidence not a single 
 contravention of his correction of Dr. Sharpey occurs. Therefore I take it that 
 all the subsequent witnesses agree with him. I might have taken any one or all 
 of twenty-four names, but for a special reason I picked out that of Dr. Brunton. 
 In a letter from Dr. Brunton, read by Mr. Copas in the papers I have quoted 
 (the exact words of which I cannot give as it has not yet been published). 
 Dr. Brunton intimated that he had never held the views concerning Harvey for 
 which I claim his admission ; but in his work " Pharmacology and Therapeutics " 
 (Macmillan,'1880), pp. 120-121, are the following words : " Harvey found valves 
 in the veins, and therefore thought it probable that the blood circulated, instead 
 of oscillating backwards and forwards. * * * if the blood circulates, 
 pressure on the veins must make them empty above and full below the point of 
 constriction. * * * Xhe experiment was tried, — the expected result 
 followed, and thus the thoughts of Harvey passed from the region of speculation 
 into that of ascertained fact." Possibly this is quite enough for Dr. Brunton. 
 Harvey worked and wrote early in the seventeenth century, a time when the 
 rights of human beings had but scant consideration, a time when men's thoughts 
 
were rough and rude on almost all questions, and when science was in its 
 infancy. We cannot blame Harvey for not being in advance of his time, and for 
 being incapable of a reasoning power which has been granted to those who follow 
 him in the nineteenth century. But we must blame those of our own time who 
 remain wilfully blind to the logical conclusions of the facts given by Harvey 
 himself. When I saj', as my general argument, that vivisectional experiments 
 are useless and misleading, I merely say what Harvey himself proves in numerous 
 instances. He had not seen the logical conclusions of his facts, but he states the 
 facts clearly enough. The following illustrations I take from his works almost at 
 random. (Willis's Edition, Old Sydenham Society.) 
 
 P. 16. Speaking of Galen's most meaningless and utterly useless experiment 
 of dividing the trachea of a living dog, forcibly distending the lungs with a pair 
 of bellows, and then tying the trachea securely, he says : •' Who, indeed, doubts 
 that, did he inflate the lungs of a subject in the dissecting-room, he would 
 instantly see the air making its way by this route, were there actually any 
 passage for it ? " In this case Harvey was clearly of opinion that vivisection 
 was useless. 
 
 P. 50. "This truth, indeed, presents itself obviously before us when we 
 consider what happens in the dissection of living animals ; the great artery need 
 not be divided, but a very small branch only (as Galen even proves in regard to 
 man), to have the whole of the blood in the body, as well that of the veins as of 
 the arteries, drained away in the course of no long time — some half hour or less. 
 Butchers are well aware of the fact, and can bear witness to it, for, cutting the 
 throat of an ox and so dividing the vessels of the neck, in less than a quarter of an 
 hour they have all the vessels bloodless. The same thing also occasionally occurs 
 with great rapidity in performing amputations and removing tumours in the 
 human subject." Here vivisection experiment was therefore wholly unnecessary, 
 but Harvey did not see it. 
 
 P. 126. " The internal jugular vein of a live fallow deer having been exposed 
 (many of the nobility and his most serene Majesty the King, my master, being 
 present) , was divided , but a few drops of blood were observed to escape from the 
 lower orifice rising up from under the clavicle ; whilst from the superior orifice 
 of the vein, and coming down from the head, a round torrent of blood gushed 
 forth. You may observe the same fact any day in practising phlebotomy : if 
 with a finger you compress the vein a little below the orifice, the blood is imme- 
 diately arrested ; but, the pressure being removed, forthwith the flow returns as 
 before." 
 
 The experiment alluded to here is, as far as I can discover, the basis of 
 Hannay's well-known picture, which affords the British public the proof of 
 Harvey's claim as the discoverer of the circulation, very much as popular theology 
 is drawn from Milton's " Paradise Lost." But Harvey admits in the last sen- 
 tence that the experiment was wholly unnecessary. 
 
 Again, if we go into Harvey's mistakes we find further proof of the misleading 
 nature of vivisectional research. Thus at p. 1 03 he says : "I can therefore boldly 
 affirm, that there is neither any anastomosis of the venae portae with the cava, 
 of the arteries with the veins," &c. , &c. (concerning the liver) ; and we find his 
 experiments giving conclusions wholly at variance with the facts displayed by 
 the injecting syringe. 
 
 What I said therefore originallj' on this subject I adhere to ; nay, I say more, 
 for I am convinced that the vague and, in many instances, unintelligible descrip- 
 tions and conclusions of Harvey would have been simpler, clearer, and more 
 correct if he had never made any vivisectional experiments at all. 
 
" Philanthropoa " criticises my views about Listerism and carbolic acid. He 
 evidently knows nothing about surgery, or he would know that my views are now, 
 with one exception, adopted by all those who practice my department of the art. 
 The same thing is true about the use of catgut. Let him look at the preparation 
 of a case of subclavian aneurism now in the Hunterian Museum, added to the 
 collection last year, and study the question a little more. 
 
 Further, I think I may say without egotism, that my surgical practice is now 
 one of the largest of its kind in the world. I have entirely dispensed with the 
 use of carbolic acid or any other such substance, greatly to the benefit of my 
 patients. Medical visitors come from all parts of the globe to see how it is done, 
 and they go away satisfied that the days of Listerism are numbered. 
 
 Let him, or any of our readers, peruse my chapter on the "History of 
 Ovariotomy" (Disease of the Ovaries, 4th edition, 1883), and then make a con- 
 trast with the facts there given and the nonsense he writes about Mr. Spencer 
 Wells on page 28 of his " Physiological Cruelty." 
 
 Finally, I have to complain that all through his book " Philanthropes " makes 
 charges of ignorance and mendacity against his opponents to which we cannot 
 retaliate unless we know exactly who he is. Particularly he throws doubt on 
 an account given by me of an amputation of the leg of a dog. If " Philan- 
 thropos" will reveal himself , I then shall be able to reply to his insinuation. 
 But it is quite impossible to reply to any utterance of this kind on the part of 
 an anonymous writer. 
 
 Mly, 24, 1883. L. T. 
 
The British Union 
 for the Abolition of Vivisection. 
 
 (The British Anti=Vivisection Society.) 
 
 Foundress: FRANCES POWER COBBE. 
 
 Hon. Sec : Hon. Treasurer : 
 
 WALTER R. HADWEN, J.P., M.D., etc. The Rev. J. STRATTON, M.A. 
 
 Secretary: Miss B, E. KIDD. 
 
 Offices: 32 Charing Cross, London, S.W. 
 
 From the Autobiography of Miss F. P. COBBE. 
 
 "To those of my readers who may desire to contribute to the 
 Anti-Vivisection Cause, and who have shared my views on it as set 
 forth in my numberless pamphlets and letters, and to those specially 
 who, like myslf, intend to bequeath money to carry on the war 
 against scientific cruelty, I now earnestly say as my final counsel : 
 
 44 
 
 Support the British Union." 
 
 In the case of benefactors desiring to bequeath legacies in support 
 of the Cause, they are respectfully urged to clearly state in their 
 Wills, **The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection," and to 
 make them payable to the Treasurer for the time being. 
 
 Form of Bequest. 
 
 I bequeath unto the Society called THE BRITISH UNION 
 
 FOR THE ABOLITION OF VIVISECTION, the sum of 
 
 free of Legacy Duty, and I direct that the same shall be paid to 
 the Treasurer for the time being of such last-mentioned Society, 
 exclusively out of such part of my personal estate as may legally 
 be bequeathed for charitable purposes, and in priority to all other 
 payments. 
 
 By virtue of the Act of Victoria, cap. 26, all Wills and Codicils must be in 
 writing, signed by the Testator, and attested by two witnesses in the presence of the 
 Testator and of each other. 
 
 A Donation of Five Pounds and upwards constitutes a Life Member. 
 An Annual Subscription of Ten Shillings constitutes an Annual 3Iember. 
 Remittances hy Crossed Cheque or Postal Order. Smaller Donations gratefully 
 accepted. 
 
 An Annual Payment of 2b. 6d. constitutes an Associate of the Union. 
 
SELECTED ANTI=VmSECTION 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 Pamphlets by Dr. HADWEN, J. P. 
 
 Some Recent Vivisection Practices in Englisii 
 
 Laboratories =■ - = =• 
 
 A Medical View of the Vivisection Question 
 
 Vivisection : its Follies and Cruelties and 
 the Way to fight it - . = = 
 
 The Antitoxin Treatment of Diphtheria 
 
 Vivisection at the Brown Institution = 
 
 The Cult of the Vivisector =, = _ 
 
 The Humour of the Vivisector = = = 
 
 Tuberculosis and Cow's Milk > = = 
 
 Was Jenner a Charlatan ? - = = 
 
 Debate between Dr. Hadwen and Mr. Stephen 
 
 Paget at Shrewsbury. 
 Debate between Dr. Hadwen and Dr. Eastham 
 Correspondence between Dr. Hadwen and 
 
 Sir Victor Horsley » . . . 
 
 Views of Men and Women of Note on the 
 Vivisection Question . = , - 
 
 (Illustrated with Portraits). 
 The Case against Vaccination - - _ 
 
 The Controversy in "The Standard" 
 A Vivisection Controversy — Mr. Stephen 
 Paget'sclaims, and Dr. Hadwen's answers 
 
 By Miss FRANCES POWER COBBE. 
 
 The Early History of the Anti-Vivisection Movement. 3d. 
 
 Light in Daric Places 3d. 
 
 By BEATRICE E. KIDD. 
 
 Why We Object to a Restriction Bill. 9d. doz., 5/- 100. 
 Antl'Vivisection Politics. 4d. per doz., 2/3 per 100. 
 Do you Know? (Illuatrated) . 4d. per doz., 2/3 per 100. 
 The Inspector's Returns for 1908. 3d. per doz., 21- per 109. 
 T he Policy of Abolition. //- per doz., 7/6 per 100. 
 
 By Miss A. F. WHITELEY. 
 
 Some Medical Views of Vivisection. 3d. each, 2/- doz. 
 
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 The uselessness of vivisection 
 
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