HEALTH SCIENCES STANDARD n HX64099695 } .P25 A physician on vivis RECAP A PHYSICIAN m VIVISECTION. EXTRACTS FROM The Annual Address before the American Academy of Medicine, Washington, May 4, 1891, BY PROFESSOR THEOPKILUS PARVIN, M.D., LL.D., C JEFFERSON HEriCAL COLLEGE, PHILADELPHIA, PA., IBresitient of \\t Sfcatirmg, CAMBRIDGE: JOHN WILSON AND SON. 1895. 0^45 ?25 Columbia ©nitoer^ftp CoHese of S^f^vsHtiana anb burgeons; Xibrarp I,' Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Columbia University Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/physicianonvivisOOparv A PHYSICIAN ON YIVISECTION. EXTRACTS FROM The Annual Address before the American Academy op Medicine, Washington, May 4, 1891, BY PEOFESSOR THEOPHILUS PARYIN, M.D., LL.D., OF JEFFEBSON MEDICAX COLLEGE, PHILADELPHLi, PA., .i3resiUent of tl)e acaUcmg. CAMBRIDGE: JOHN WILSON AND SON. 1895. Q?^' ^a^" INTRODUCTION. The following excerpts from the Pre- sidential Address of Professor Theophilus Parvtn, M.D., touching the subject of Vivi- section from the standpoint of a teacher of Medical Science, deserve a wide circulation, not only in the medical profession, but also among all lovers of scientific progress. The compiler has taken the liberty of marking by italics several sentences which seem worthy of special note, and for such em- phasis he alone is responsible. It is but just to Professor Parvin to say, that this reprint from his published Address is not made by his authority ; but that it has been 4 INTRODUCTION. undertaken solely from belief in the value of opinions so forcibly and clearly expressed, and based upon so many years' experience both as a medical teacher and as a prac- tical physician. Copies of this pamphlet ma}^ be had through the address below. Price, six cents each, post- paid, or ten copies for fift}' cents. Address Sec'y American Humanitarian League, P. O. Box 215, Providence, R. I. OlS" VIYISECTIOX. THE subject of bacteriology has, I believe, undue importance in professional study and teaching. . . . May not a similar state- ment be made in regard to vivisection ? My belief is that the value of this method of study in relation to surgery and therapeutics has been exaggerated. So far as the first depart- ment is concerned, reference will be made to abdominal and to brain surgery. If Mr. Tait's statement is accepted, — and his authority and ability none can justly question, — vivisection lias been an injury, not a help, to the former. His declarations upon this point have been positive and frequent. One of the most recent, 1889, is as follows: '"'- Instead of vivisection having in any ivay advanced ahdominal sur- gery, it has, on the contrary, retarded it.^"* 6 ON WVISECTION. Those engaged in brain-surgery sometimes refer to the great advantages obtained by vivi- section in cerebral localization ; but Dr. Seguin, whose authority will be admitted, referring to a paper by Horsley, makes tlie following state- ments : " The author appears to assume that our progress in cerebral localization has been mainly dependent upon experimentation. Here again we must differ from him. Clinical ob- servation and pathological data come first (Broca for speech-centre, Hughlings-Jackson for a hand-centre and general doctrine), the animal experiments with detailed proofs by Hitzig, Ferrier, and others long after ; and the solid facts upon which we make our daily local- ization diagnoses have been patiently accumu- lated by patliologists, and would stand to-day supporting the doctrine of cerebral localization if not one animal's brain had been touched. Besides, in the case of the visual half-centre, human pathological facts have overthrown the result of experimentation (Ferrier's angular- gyrus centre), and have made us, for practical purposes, indifferent to the contradictory re- sults of Munk and Goltz. It is safe to say ON VIVISECTION. 7 that every one of the so-called ' centres ' in the human brain have been determined em- pirically by post-mortem proofs, independently of experimental data. What animal experi- ments would have led us, for example, to locate the half-centre for ordinary vision in the cuneus, the centre for the leg in the para- central lobule, and tliat for audited language in the left first temporal gyrus ? In this de- partment of pathology medical science has been strictly inductive and sufficient unto itself, though receiving confirmatory evidence from the physiologist. The first (speech) and the last (visual) centres have been discovered by clinical and pathological studies." Facility in operating is one of the advan- tages claimed for vivisection, and the claim is just. Nevertheless, the animals thus used for the education of the surgeon ought to he com- pletely ancesthetized during operations, and killed immediately after ^ and not left to live days of suffering. Moreover, it should be remembered that great surgeons have made their work intelligent and facile by operations upon the human cadaver ; the glory of many 8 ON VIVISECTION. of our country's dead surgeons has never been eclipsed by any of those now living, no matter how much time they have given to vivisection. What shall be said of the value of experi- mental therapeutics ? The shortest and most positive answer is that given by one of tlie highest French authorities, Dujardin-Beau- metz : " Experimental therapeutics exist only in name, and will continue nominal until we are able to create at will in animals the dis- eases common to mankind." The famous Hyderabad Commission, after killing hundreds of animals, chiefly dogs, by chloroform anaesthesia, concluded that death occurred from asphyxia, and never from syncope ; and therefore in the administration of chloroform as an anaesthetic to human beings, the respiration only need be observed. Dr. Richardson shows that the inference is erroneous, stating that " its first failure arises from the fact that the reasoning soul, as Thomas Willis calls it, is left out of the argu- ment." Not only this, but equally able and eminent experimenters with those concerned in the Hyderabad investigations have shown that ON VIVISECTION. 9 dogs may, when killed by chloroform inhala- tion, perish from syncope, or from syncope and asphyxia, instead of from the latter only. Differences of climate and differences of dogs have been suggested as explaining these differ- ent results. Who shall compose these strifes ? What uncertainties may belong to investiga- tions made by the most skilful^ and. hoio umvill- ing should medicine be to accept all conclusions of the laboratory as certain truth! Medicine does not accept in all cases such conclusions. For example, doctors, relying upon clinical experience, give certain mercu- rials to excite the hepatic secretion ; but this practice ought to have been abandoned long ago when the experiments of Rutherford proved that in dogs no such result followed. Imagine the experimental therapeutist giving a patient a dose of calomel, who innocently asks, " Is thy servant a dog that this drug is given me ? " The doctor of course can reply, though the imperfection of his method is thus confessed, " No ; it is because you are not a dog that I prescribe it." Some two years since, Herbert Spencer hav- 10 ON VIVISECTION. ing suggested to Huxley that in case he were sick he would employ a practitioner who trusted in the teaching of experimental therapeutics, the latter replied, " Heaven forbid that I should fall into that practitioner's hands ! and if I thought any writings of mine could afford the slightest pretext for the amount of man- slaughter of which that man would be guilty, I should be sorry indeed." When one reads the experiments made upon animals with some well-known remedies, very probably he finds no addition of a prac- tical sort to his knowledge ; he learns nothing as to when, in what doses and intervals, the medicines are to be administered. Digging post-holes and fixing posts in them will de- fine boundaries, but do not make a fruitful orchard. When we consider that drugs do not act upon man invariably as they do upon inferior animals, nor when thus acting they may not in corresponding doses ; and that animals differ among themselves as to susceptibility ; and that, finally, these animals are not suffer- ing from the diseases for which in the human ON WVISECTION. 11 subject the remedies are to be given, not in- deed afflicted with any disease, — if 7nust he obvious that there are sources of fallacy inhe- rent in the method^ and that false conclusions may residt. Whether the good outweighs the evil, whether the profit in this business is greater than the loss, must be finally decided, not by ardent vivisectionists who are liable to become intolerant and aggressive, nor by zealous anti- vivisectionists who may exalt sentiment above knowledge and reason, but by the calm, con- tinued observation and experience of conscien- tious, intelligent practitioners. It seems to me that the most valuable result of experiments upon animals has been in the discovery of the etiology of so-called septic infection ; and hence the means, whether aseptic or antiseptic, by which this great evil may be usually averted. Pasteur's investigations as to the cause of hydrophobia and the employment of preven- tive inoculations, require longer observation and experience for appreciation. Koch's method of cure of tuberculosis rates much 12 ON VIVISECTION. lower than it did a few months ago. It is not beyond the hounds of possibility ^ that before many years the average results from anti- hydrophobio and anti-tuherculous inoculations will be of such an unfavorable character that they will give one of the strongest arguments against vivisection} There are certain presumptive arguments against vivisection. If tliere be a God of love and power, without whose knowledge not even a sparrow falls to the ground, — '■ a God who giveth to the beast his food and to the young ravens which cry ; who is good to all, and whose tender mercies are over all His works, — surely it is not in accordance with His character and purposes that animals should undergo cruel tortures for man's benefit. The animal creation has been made subject to man ; many of them are our dependents, and some are capable of the strongest attachment to human beings, and become the most devoted friends. Even the wild animal sometimes appeals in its distress for human help. ^ This was written in 1891. Already, in 1895, the " anti-tuberculous inoculations " have been given up. ON VITTSECTION. 13 What might not all animal creation become to man if everywhere the law of kindness ruled his action ! Physicians, whose very name points to widest sympathy with Nature, ought to be the chief apostles in preventing cruelty and proclaiming kindness to animals as the duty of man, — and therefore must take heed lest the power of their apostleship be weak- ened by needless, useless, and painful vivi- sections ; for preaching and practice coincide, if good effect comes from the former. The attitude toward vivisection taken by some of the best men of the age is assuredly very hostile. For example, three of the great- est poets of the century — Tennyson, Eobert Browning, and Whittier — have condemned it. Chief-Justice Coleridge, PhiUips Brooks, and Morgan Dix are other illustrious men that have given severe censure. Robert Browning, a few years before his death, said : " But this I know, I would rather submit to the ivorst of the deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a sin- gle dog or cat tortured under the pretence of sav- ing me a twinge or two.'' Morgan Dix, in the course of a letter written upon this subject last 14 ON VIVISECTION. year, uses the following language : " I have read accounts of the tortures inflicted in the name of science on the creatures committed to our care or placed in our power by a Divine Provi- dence, and they have made me sick at heart for weeks together. I shall never peruse these frightful statistics again. I have read what arguments are made in extenuation or recom- mendation of the practice^ and their only effect has been to strengthen my conviction that man is cafahle of becoming the most barbarous and most merciless of all agents.''^ It is wise for physicians interested in vivi- section to recognize that there is on the part of prominent women and men in the laity a strong sentiment of antagonism to experiments ■ upon animals ; and therefore they should avoid all such work not promising certain benefit to man, and anaesthetics ought always to be em- \ ployed. I sometimes fear that the ansesthesia 15 frequently nominal rather than real, else why so many and ingenious contrivances for confining the animal during operations, — con- trivances that are not made use of in surgical operations upon human beings, their immo- bility being secured by profound anaesthesia. ON VIVISECTION. 15 While it is my belief that the majority of vivisectors pursue their work out of ardent love of science, or desire to benefit humanity (and I trust they carefully and conscientiously avoid inflicting needless pain), there are others who seem, seeking useless knoivledge, to he Mind to the writhing agony and deaf to the cry of pain of their victims, and who have been guilty of the most damnable cruelties, luithout the de- nunciation by the public and the profession that their ivickedness deserves and demands. These criminals are not confined to Germany or France, to England or Italy, but may he found in our oivn country. Should the law restrict the performance of vivisection ? I think it ought, chiefly as an expression of public sentiment and for moral effect. . . . That restriction ought to forbid all experi- ments upon animals made without luorthy objects; and in every case, so far as possible, the animal during and subsequent to the oper- ation must be ^preserved from pain. Original investigations, very often a euphemism for vivisections, may seem quite fascinating to the 16 ON VIVISECTION. young medical student, and possibly be tbinks tbereby to find a sbort road to fame : tbe result frequently remains in tbe embryonic condition of manuscript read cbiefly, if not exclusively, by tbe autbor. But sucb investi- gations ougbt not to be made except under tbe directions of a qualified and conscientious teacber, wbo will see tbat tbey bave a reason- able probability of usefulness, and tbat tbey are conducted so tbat no pain or the least pos- sible pain is inflicted. Vivisection is in more danger from ignorant, rasb, and reckless ex- perimenters tban from those directly hostile to it. I cannot think that vivisections done for teaching purposes, simply showing what has been proved time and again upon hundreds and thousands of victims, are justifiable, unless anaesthesia is employed not merely to miti- gate, but completely to abolish, suffering of the animals. If tbe rule just mentioned is not observed, the influence of such experiments is injurious both to the operator and to the witnesses of the operation. DATE DUE T] as ra w- pi'' ' i^i > MCO 6¥m n '^27 V^ F ** r ITT 9 ^B-»f% rt the in Demco, Inc. 38-293