Les chiens aboient et la caravane passe.
Les chiens aboient et la caravane passe.
FOOTNOTES:[7]See footnote, p. 17.[8]These statistics can be found in all technical works; and I refer those who may be curious to study them in detail to the special memoirs and excellent treatises on pathology which have been published in England, France, and Germany.See also appendix.
[7]See footnote, p. 17.
[7]See footnote, p. 17.
[8]These statistics can be found in all technical works; and I refer those who may be curious to study them in detail to the special memoirs and excellent treatises on pathology which have been published in England, France, and Germany.See also appendix.
[8]These statistics can be found in all technical works; and I refer those who may be curious to study them in detail to the special memoirs and excellent treatises on pathology which have been published in England, France, and Germany.
See also appendix.
I now come to a favourite theme of anti-vivisectionists, viz., that experimental physiology has produced nothing, and that the differences of opinion amongsavantsare so considerable that this alone proves the impossibility of vivisection ever establishing anything permanent.
Here again it is difficult to reply because of the very ignorance of the honourable gentlemen who criticise us. Most certainly there still remain many disputed and disputable points in physiology, and nothing is easier than to find therein striking and abundant contradictions. If we wished to amuse ourselves, we might write five or six big volumes on the subject; but let us leave this tedious and useless labour to the anti-vivisectionists to accomplish to their hearts' content. I prefer to tell them, what they donot wish to know perhaps, that contradiction is the very essence of science. As our demonstrations appeal not to faith but to reason; as we admit free discussion, free investigation from every side; any proposition must have multitudinous and positive proofs in its favour before it can be adopted without hesitation. Even our opinions were never prescribed by faith or violence; we take pleasure in provoking discussion and contradiction. With our adversaries' leave be it said that a dogmatic, irreproachable book, where there was no place for hesitation or doubt, would be the very negation of science. Even the treatises of geometry and mechanics, although non-experimental, rational sciences, sometimes contradict themselves. It has been rightly said that the history of science is the history of human errors—errors which, little by little, draw nearer and nearer to supreme truth without ever attaining it. We must understand this, or we shall be rebelling against the conception of scientific truth.
Now, in treatises on physiology, we find a number of well-demonstrated truths, and a still larger number of truths only half demonstrated,and, consequently, contested. Our successors will also certainly find in our books of to-day an enormous number of errors.
What conclusion is to be drawn from this fact? Have those who reproach the science of physiology with being only a tissue of contradictions and errors ever opened a book on physiology (for example, the text-book of Schaefer, in two large, compact, closely written volumes of 1000 pages each)? They would there find thousands of positive, incontestable facts on all the questions which concern physiology.
Let us take, each in its turn, the great functions of life, and we shall see that they have become known only by experimentation.
1.The Circulation of the Blood, suspected by Michel Servet, Realdo Colombo, and Andreas Cesalpin, was really established by Harvey in 1628.
Yet Harvey was only able to demonstrate it by experiments performed on the living bodies of frogs and deer. Since Harvey's time, the laws of the circulation have been established with admirable precision. Hales demonstratedthe pressure of blood in the vessels. Chauveau and Marey introduced into the heart of a horse an apparatus which enabled the pressure of the blood in the heart, in the arteries, and in the veins, to be measured. Weber found that the pneumogastric nerve stopped the heart's action. Ludwig applied the graphic method to the circulation. Delicate instruments have been constructed which give diagrams of the pulsations and measure the pressure of the blood in the arteries and in the heart of man. Claude Bernard discovered the nerves which regulate the movements of the vessel walls. In short, the whole history of the circulation is due solely to vivisections, and it would be ridiculous to speak of our uncertainties in this respect; for the essential mechanical or nervous laws of the circulation are as well known now as those of the combinations of nitrogen with oxygen.
2.The Respirationremained profoundly unknown, as to its inmost nature, right up to Lavoisier's time. Lavoisier placed some guinea-pigs in a box filled with ice, measured the quantity of heat thrown off, the quantity of oxygen consumed, the quantity of carbonic acidproduced; and he was thus able to deduce a fundamental law of life, viz., that life is essentially combustion. He made experiments on himself also; but however great one's respect for the life of a guinea-pig may be, must it be considered wrong that Lavoisier should have experimented on the guinea-pig before experimenting on himself?
As for the laws which regulate this consumption of oxygen and this production of carbonic acid, to discover these it was necessary to put into cages animals of every species and of every size. And there is, perhaps, not a single physiologist who has not made this experiment, at the risk of annoying the cats and dogs thus exposed—without, as far as that goes, doing them any harm—to varied temperatures or to different diets. Moreover, in order to study the respiratory exchanges, physiologists experiment on man as well; is, therefore, the extraordinary scruple against experimenting on animals to be imposed upon them also?
To take an excellent example of the services which experimental physiology can render notto science only—which would, indeed, be quite sufficient to justify them—but to humanity, I will cite the experiments of Paul Bert with relation to elevated atmospheric pressures. There are certain workmen who are obliged to work under water, at a depth of 20 to 30 yards, for the construction of piers and bridges, or the exploration of sunken vessels. Now, it had long been observed that some of these men died suddenly on returning to the surface. Experimental physiology was able to discover the cause of that sudden death. When a man (or an animal), after having been subjected to several times the normal atmospheric pressure, is suddenly released from this pressure, the nitrogen dissolved in the blood is disengaged suddenly: this produces gaseous embolism, that is to say, bubbles of gas are formed, which block the blood-vessels and prevent the blood circulating in the capillaries. Knowing this, the death of men working at a pressure of four atmospheres could then be avoided by releasing them slowly, that is by bringing them slowly back to the normal atmosphericpressure. Is it barbarous to attach more importance to the death of these men than to the death of the few dogs and mice that served to establish this law?
I was able to demonstrate that, if the temperature of the air is very high, as in the hottest days of summer, dogs that are muzzled die rapidly of hyperpyrexia (i.e.high fever), for they are no longer able to cool themselves by panting. It is true that this experiment cost the lives of a few dogs, but has it not saved many others by pointing out that dogs should not be muzzled under certain conditions? It goes without saying I am not speaking of the theoretical consequences of this experiment.
Artificial respiration, which can restore to life the apparently drowned, is one, of the conquests of experimental physiology; for we have been able to determine the best method and the essential conditions (for artificial breathing) by experiments of a very precise nature. Is it nothing to know how to restore to life the apparently drowned?
3.The Process of Digestionhas also been learned solely by experiment. In the historyof science there are two or three cases of individuals in whom a wound or an operation has produced a gastric fistula, that is to say an abdominal opening through which the stomach can be reached and food introduced. Had we remained satisfied with these accidental observations, we should have obtained but mediocre results. Physiologists therefore have made experimental gastric fistulæ. Dogs thus operated on, after an illness of a few days, recover thoroughly. Some physiologists have kept dogs for several years in this condition: gay, caressing, docile, they did not appear to complain of their lot. They were better nourished, more petted and loved than the many starving dogs which roam about the country. They were not a whit more unhappy than was Alexis St Martin (observed in 1831 by Dr Beaumont) and Marcellin (whom I observed in 1878, at the beginning of my career). Quite recently an eminent Russian physiologist, Pawloff, has, by making gastric fistulæ in animals, been able to discover a number of important facts, absolutely necessary to be known for the treatment of diseases of thestomach, and even for the establishment of a normal alimentation.
The problem of alimentation is, indeed, one of the most essential, perhaps the most essential, in the history of humanity. I suppose that anti-vivisectionists are aware of the fact that, even in Europe, large populations exist who are insufficiently nourished. Under these conditions, is it not desirable to know exactly the quantities of carbon, nitrogen, salt, lime, and phosphorus which are necessary for animals, and consequently for man? Should not anti-vivisectionists, interested in vegetarianism, before venturing to institute a vegetable diet for man, try it first of all upon carnivorous animals, so as to know how a mixed alimentation can be modified by a vegetable alimentation, and to what extent those modifications are compatible with health?
4.The Nervous Systemis not so well known, so far as its functions are concerned, as the circulatory system or the digestive system. Nevertheless, positive discoveries are extremely numerous: the action of the nerves on the glands and on the muscles; the part played bythe different portions of the brain; nervous degenerations; the laws governing reflex actions—all this constitutes a formidable body of well-established facts. I do not pretend that everything is known. Alas! No! There are still innumerable truths to be discovered, and serious errors are doubtless most learnedly taught, with many contradictions, much uncertainty, much confusion—all of which simply proves that physiology is not a science whose last chapter has yet been written, that the last word of this science has not yet been pronounced. Nevertheless, blind indeed would the man be who would venture to conclude that physiology was not a science; or to assert that physiology is a science of little importance; that the rôle of the physiologist, from the point of view of the alleviation of human miseries, is null; and that knowledge of physiological facts is useless. Will it be claimed that the doctor has no need of a knowledge of physiology? I will reply by a comparison I am accustomed to make before my medical students when I wish to make them understand the necessity of a sound physiological education.
Let us suppose that a watchmaker claimed to be able to cure disordered watches, but at the same time declared himself unable to tell by what springs and by what mysterious mechanism a healthy watch should mark the hour; that watchmaker would inspire me with a very small amount of confidence, and I would not go to him; for, until the contrary is proved to me, I believe that an indispensable condition for repairing a watch when out of order is to know how a watch should work when in good repair.
Physiology exists only because there have been physiologists. By that I do not mean to say that all the truths of physiology are due exclusively to vivisection. I only claim that physiology without vivisection would be strangely clumsy, limited to a few empirical facts, and that, if vivisection be proscribed, we must resolutely give up classing physiology among the sciences. We may study the stars and the earth, electricity and heat, geography and history, and are we to be forbidden to study the functions of living matter? Such a proposal is obviously absurd, for of all the sciences accessible to man, physiology is that which is nearest to him.
It is only the ignorant who dare assert that experimentation on animals cannot be applied to man. There are of course differences which physiologists train themselves to perceive; for example, certain poisons are almost innocuous to some animals, and are very fatal to man. The alkaloid of belladonna, atropine, is a thousand times more toxic for a man than for a goat. It is difficult to kill a goat with morphia, whilst a drop of laudanum kills a new-born babe. Carbonic oxide is absolutely harmless for the invertebrata which have no blood. Crayfish and snails live with impunity in pure oxide of carbon. And I could cite a number of other facts which are described in detail in every treatise of physiology or pharmacology.
But what does it matter to us if we know it?—and we can nearly always know it. There are functional differences between men and animals; and physiologists know these perfectly well by their training; but there are, above all things, much more striking resemblances. It would be, for instance, ridiculous to suppose that oxygen did not dissolve in our blood in about the same way in which it dissolves in the blood of a cator a rabbit; that the pneumogastric nerve, which stops the heart of the cat and the rabbit, will not stop the heart of man; that the arterial pressure, which is 16 c.m. of mercury in the horse, the dog, and the cat, is 1 c.m. or 1.60 c.m. in man; that the transformation of albuminous matters into urea takes place differently in the dog and in man. On the contrary, everything goes to prove the general laws are the same, and that the physiology of man, whilst not rigorously identical in every respect with the physiology of the animal, is nevertheless sufficiently analogous to enable ageneral physiologyto comprise in its vast laws the functions of every living being, man, mammal, vertebrata, invertebrata, and even every living cell.
If we took the assertions of anti-vivisectionists literally, we should arrive at the strange conclusion, that the victims of vivisection are immensely numerous, and that vivisection is one of the calamities of the century. As a matter of fact, the number of victims due to physiology is very low. Let us try to count them up.
There are only about twenty laboratories in France where experiments on animals are made. Let us allow that there are twenty in England, twenty in Italy, forty in Germany, and fifty in other countries, making a total of 150 laboratories. If we suppose that a dog, a cat, and a rabbit are sacrificed every day in each of these laboratories, we should certainly exaggerate.
Let us suppose, nevertheless, that it is so;and let us even admit five victims a day, with 300 working days in the year, which is also an evident exaggeration: this will make about 200,000 victims a year. This number, which seems very considerable, is in reality very small, if we put it against the enormous number of living beings. Probably about two thousand millions of mammals die every year, so that the proportion of animals that suffer a little (and very little) through the act of man in his search for knowledge is one in 10,000, in other words, a negligible quantity.
In the immense earthly universe are thousands and thousands of pains, of fierce, incessant struggles between living animals. Every rock in the ocean, every tree in the forest, shelters ferocious combats, and is the constant scene of painful death-agonies. Darwin has admirably shown that life is a struggle for life, that the weak are crushed by the strong, and that the voice of living nature is a cry of distress rather than a hymn of joy. Therefore, in this universal concert of animal pain and of human pain, the slight pain of animals experimented upon is a little thing, and froman absolute point of view we have the right to disregard it.
Think well over it all for a moment. By giving an experimental disease to a rabbit, for example, I scarcely change its lot. If I had left it to itself, in one, two, or perhaps three years it would have been attacked by another disease, probably more cruel than the tuberculosis with which I infected it. The lot of dogs which die of old age is scarcely enviable. How many poor old dogs have I seen, impotent from rheumatism, completely blind, no longer able to crawl about, covered with disgusting ulcers, seeming to beg for the finishing stroke which would put an end to their misery! And old, worn-out horses! What a spectacle! This residuum of existence of old animals is truly pitiable, and, taking everything into consideration, it is not an enormous dose of happiness we have left them in not sacrificing them when they were young.
But I shall not dwell upon this argument, for it might also be applied to human beings. The Greeks said: "Happy are they who die young, for they are beloved of the gods." Perhapssome day human ethics will allow us to spare our dear ones the cruel and useless sufferings of old age! I know not. But what I do know is that it is not inhuman to sacrifice an old horse or an old dog in order to save it from going through all the tortures which old age and disease hold in reserve for him.
In any case, the sufferings produced by physiologists who inoculate diseases into animals weigh very little in comparison with natural suffering, not only because the suffering of animals is always more or less immersed in the nihilism of semi-consciousness, but also because these experimental sufferings are less than natural sufferings, and extend over a very small number of victims.
But the question does not lie there.The point is not whether the suffering of animals be a large or small quantity in nature from an absolute standpoint; the question is a higher one: we must ask ourselves if the fact of inflicting pain is compatible with human morality.
Tolstoi says somewhere that the sciences are nothing, that art is nothing, that the truescience is that of good and evil, of justice and injustice. Everything sinks into insignificance in presence of this great duty, or rather life has no other object. We should be entirely engrossed in doing good; justice should be our sole preoccupation.
If, then, from an absolute point of view the suffering of frogs and rabbits does not count, it counts a lot from the point of view of human morality. If a bad child should martyrise a toad, it is not the toad which would interest me: poor creature of diffused consciousness, ignorant even of its own pain, such a tiny pain, too, in comparison with the immense pains which the beings of this great universe are suffering at this moment! No; the toad would scarcely exist for me. The child would interest me greatly; and all my pity would be turned upon that cruel child. My efforts would tend much less towards preventing the toad from suffering than towards preventing that human being from becoming a barbarian.
If the anti-vivisectionists were true moralists and not fanatics they would say: "To provoke suffering to produce disease, to inflict tortures,is an execrable moral lesson. Whilst the first duty of man is to be good, you instruct young men to be wicked. The doctor, who ought to be compassionate for human suffering, should not serve his apprenticeship in that noble profession by showing himself devoid of pity for the suffering of innocent victims. A civilisation which allows itself to inflict death and torture on living beings can be only a barbarous civilisation."
I recognise the force of that argument. And whilst not a single one of the preceding assertions of the anti-vivisectionists had succeeded in moving me, I confess that this objection of human morality is a most powerful one. I am nevertheless going to try to show that it is not admissible.
And first of all, because there is in this world much suffering, human suffering, which it is more important to allay than that of the victims of vivisection. If our sole care were that of morality, what battles would we not have to fight! There are thousands of people in India who die of hunger; and throughout Asia whole populations perish of disease which a littlehygiene could prevent. The hunger-evil is rife in Russia; most of the peasants in Sicily also never know what it is to satisfy their hunger. The misery of children is lamentable everywhere: in our large cities, Paris, Berlin, London, it is not exceptional, alas! to come across people dying of hunger. The terribly high rate of mortality among children less than a year old is due to hunger and to hunger alone. In Europe two million children, under one year of age, die every year solely because their parents are plunged in misery, because the mother, instead of nursing her child, is forced to work, to earn her living at manual labour, which dries up her milk.These two million children who die of hunger are the disgrace of our civilisation.And yet we continue to live in luxury, we look on calmly and indifferently at the agony of our human brothers, an agony which we could easily alleviate. For my part, willingly shall I allow myself to be melted with pity at the sight of tuberculous rabbits when I see those persons who champion these same rabbits, develop within themselves some pity for human suffering, a pity grown so deep, so powerful,that they devote their entire fortune towards rescuing their brethren from death through hunger.
There is not only famine and want. There are many other social scourges; and these scourges are much more serious than vivisection can ever become. There is alcoholism, prostitution, war. And I have no need to say that alcoholism is an evil, that prostitution is an evil, that war is an evil. When human morality has been developed to such a pitch that man will no longer be able to look on these great social miseries without horror, it will be time enough perhaps to ask if it be permissible to seek for truth at the expense of a little animal suffering. But until then I have the right to stigmatise as hypocrisy all that immense pity which certain people profess for dogs, side by side with their immense heedlessness, which they do not fear to display, towards the fate of so many unfortunate human beings.
If anti-vivisectionists were animated by a great desire for morality, they would endeavour to reform our social condition, which is abominable and full of horrors; they wouldstrive to impart into youth other notions than that of smug satisfaction with the present social conditions. As long as we have not faced the profound evils which gnaw at the root of our social system, as long as we take a delight in the egotistical satisfaction of our capitalist and martial society, it is not permissible, if we would not be accused of scandalous hypocrisy, to affect pretensions to morality.
Even from the very exclusive and rather paltry point of view of animals' rights, are there not among anti-vivisectionists those of social position who make no scruple in amusing themselves by fishing and hunting? In this case they kill, they martyrise, not to conquer new truths, but for their amusement and recreation.
The hunter who fires at a hare sends after the wounded animal a savage dog, trained to fierceness for this pursuit, and he looks on at the chase with delight. The angler who has hooked a fish feels a pleasurable emotion when he holds in the palm of his hand the struggling, writhing being. Elegant sportsmen aim at pigeons to give proofs of their dexterity. A large number of victims do not die on the spot,but, with wounded wing, or chest pierced with lead, creep away to die in agony in the neighbouring woods. Quite a large gathering of fashionable young women and distinguished young men follow on horseback the tortures of a wretched stag pursued by a furious pack of hounds. And, finally, the entire population of a large city (Seville or Madrid, San Sebastian or Valencia), men and women, old and young, go crazy with delight at the hideous spectacle of a noble bull disembowelling horses, tormented by the picadors, and finally succumbing, exhausted, done to death by his cowardly enemies. There are sights for you! there are amusements for you if you like, which reflect scant honour on human ethics; and well do I understand generous-hearted men and women forming societies to combat war, alcoholism, prostitution, distributing their wealth among the starving populations, also turning their energies against hunting, angling, pigeon-shooting, and bullfights. It is a noble programme of life which they have drawn up for themselves, and such people merit our highest admiration.
Societies for the prevention of cruelty toanimals are admirable and irreproachable when they defend animals against human savagery: for example, when they prevent carters from lashing into ribbons the skin of the miserable horses under their charge; or when they put down the practice of harnessing a horse to a cart too heavily loaded; or when they interdict cock-fighting and bull-baiting. I will even point out to these same societies, so enamoured of animals' rights, a new kind of protection of quite a special nature.
There exist a number of species of animals which, hunted and hemmed in by man, are on the point of extinction. How many, alas! have for ever disappeared; and no human power will ever be able to bring back to life an animal species once extinct.
It is a great pity; for these charming forms, the joy of the eyes, provided with curious and delicate instincts, have been annihilated for ever. I will give some examples to show to what an extent it is necessary for man to protect the animal against man himself. Man has the taste for devastation; and when he is excited, either by the fury of the hunt or the bait of gain, he doesnot hesitate to make many victims without asking himself if these furious ravages will not find their consummation in the destruction of an entire race of animals.
Already in the Polar regions, some fine species of animals have disappeared. The great auk (extinct since 1844) exists no longer. One species of walrus has also disappeared.
The seal is on the road to extinction; fishermen have indulged in such orgies of destruction that international measures have had to be taken to prevent the total destruction of the species. And indeed be it not forgotten that if the Governments of England and of the United States have made regulations restricting the massacre of seals, it is not by any means in order to stem the tide of destruction of an animal species interesting in itself, but solely because such destruction would put an end to a source of very considerable commercial profit.
A hundred years ago, whales were so abundant that 30,000 fishermen earned their living by whale-hunting. Now, our means of warfare against the cetacea have become so effectivethat whales can no longer defend themselves, and their number is decreasing every day to such an extent that we can almost foretell the moment when the whale will have ceased to exist.
In America, vast regions were overrun by immense herds of bisons. They have been massacred with such mad and blind ardour that if the Government had not finally taken some tardy and insufficient measures of precaution, the bison would be extinct too.
Aurochs, elks, chamois, bears have almost disappeared, whereas a century ago they were widely diffused in Europe. In proportion as man takes possession of the earth to cultivate it, he kills off every wild species and replaces them by domestic species where race loses its value. If this goes on, a time will come, unfortunately, when all-powerful man, having given himself up to the thoughtless destruction of everything not of immediate use to him, will have wiped off the face of the earth all save domestic animals. There will be hens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and guinea-fowls, sheep, oxen, donkeys, horses, cows. Perhaps for the pleasureof hunting, a few deer and a few hares will be preserved; but all wild species which cannot be reproduced in captivity will have disappeared, will no longer be there to delight our gaze. In France, the small birds are destroyed in rank fury, and every measure taken to protect them is inefficacious, thanks to the rage for destruction among the inhabitants. Asia and Africa once upon a time—when almost unknown and unexplored by Europeans—sheltered many a noble animal species to-day well-nigh extinct, and which, if strict measures of precaution be not speedily taken, will soon have disappeared for ever. The large monkeys, the ostrich, the giraffe, and especially the elephant, shun the haunts of man, for man is their ruthless enemy. It looks as though a hundred years hence, not one will be left.
It is not without sadness we think of that future civilisation, a brilliant one perhaps from several points of view, but monotonous and tame, as it will no longer possess this marvellous variety of different animal species which is as one of the smiles of nature. A pitiable uniformity will replace the varied forms whichnatural selection has taken thousands of years to bring forth; and then perhaps some tardy poet, in contemplation before the vast sheepfolds and poultry farms, where man will cultivate the species of use to him, will regret those far-off days when birds of all kinds sang in the forests, blending their gambols with those of the graceful animals which human civilisation will have annihilated.
There, I fancy, is a fertile subject for meditation, and interesting initiative for all those who have at heart the rights of animals, and, if I may express myself thus, the future of animality.
But the sight of a vivisection, the preparation of a laboratory experiment cannot be compared with the stupid and mischievous pleasures of angling and hunting. It is not a question of amusing oneself, of killing time, of diversion, of finding in the sight of blood or pain a recreation for boredom. It is quite another motive which animates thesavant. He has ever before his mind the thought that his efforts are going to bring a little alleviation to the great sum of human suffering. If he inoculates a rabbit withtuberculosis, he cannot help thinking of all the wretched consumptives who are at that moment in the throes of death. He knows well that each time he discovers even only a particle of truth, that little bit of new truth is going to bring in its train some consequence which will bear fruit in the healing of suffering mankind.
It is with no light-heartedness that the physiologist causes the blood to flow, inoculates disease, injects poisons. I know the thought which animates my friends and my colleagues when they make their experiments: it is never without the most profound pity that we dare to take a healthy, gay, confiding animal, and give him chloroform, or inject a poison into him. This respect for pain, far from decreasing with age, on the contrary goes on increasing. Just as the doctor as he grows older becomes more and more sensitive to the sight of human suffering, so the physiologist who has performed many experiments understands more and more thoroughly the seriousness of pain. He feels all the weight of it: he has a greater responsibility. His morality has become higher andhigher, his sensibility has increased. Often he repeats to himself this line of Virgil's:—
"Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco."(Knowing misfortune, I teach the succour of the wretched.)
"Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco."
(Knowing misfortune, I teach the succour of the wretched.)
It would, therefore, be altogether unjust to reproach the experimenter with barbarism or inhumanity; for more than any one else does he possess the sentiment of the immense misfortunes of humanity, and if he resigns himself to experimentation, it is because he sees behind his experiment an alleviation of the sufferings of both man and beast.
It is related that, in one of the great battles of the last century, a general, in order to protect the retreat of his army, was obliged to send a squadron of cavalry to make a hopeless charge upon the enemy's infantry. This meant sending those brave fellows to certain death. Yet he did not hesitate; and with tears in his eyes he gave the order to charge, convinced, as every general should be, that it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice a few human lives for the salvation of the army, for the salvation of the country.
Well, then! We consider ourselves as soldiers waging battle against the blind, malefic forces of nature. On certain days, so as to triumph over disease and ignorance, we must sacrifice a few victims. Then we do not hesitate, and it is our duty not to hesitate.
It even seems to me that those men who pass their lives in nauseous rooms, amidst poison and virus, receiving no other recompense for long labours than the satisfaction of duty accomplished, merit the esteem and respect of every one. They seek neither wealth nor honours. It is not in the laboratories of physiology that a man grows rich. It is not in the laboratories of physiology that man wins high social positions. But what matter! He has used his life to alleviate the sufferings of others. He has had ever before him another ideal than that of the anti-vivisectionists, the ideal of human suffering, which is much more to be respected than animal suffering in spite of all empty words and phrases.
Therefore, when we speak of vivisection or of experimentation before young men, we must not be taxed with immorality; because work,the search for truth, pity for the misfortunes of man, pity also for the unfortunate animals—these I think are subjects which should ennoble the minds of the young men who listen to us.
We will now briefly consider an interesting and highly practical side of the question. In certain countries, as in England, there are laws regulating vivisection. In other countries, as in France, Germany, and Italy, there is nothing analogous; consequently public opinion on this point is uncertain.
In the beginning of this book, I acknowledged that, in spite of the exaggeration of their complaints, anti-vivisectionists had rendered real service to general morality by calling attention to the excesses committed by a few vivisectionists in the past. No one recognises this benefit more than I, and I willingly grant that their preaching has, on the whole, had a happy result. Is it however, expedient to go further, and to prohibit or simply to regulate vivisection?
For reasons given above, it seems to me that prohibition would be absurd and injurious, as well in the land of Harvey and Hunter as in the lands of Bernard and Pasteur, of Galvani and Spallanzani, of Johannes Müller and Helmholtz. Prohibition would mean closing the book of science, stemming all progress, condemning humanity eternally to the same miseries, to writhe, powerless, in the same old track. Fortunately, no one thinks seriously of suppressing physiological experimentation; and, therefore, we have no need to dwell on this point.
But regulation is quite a different thing from prohibition. Now, I showed that certain practices should be condemned. Should they, however, be condemned by law? Why should the law be substituted for the exigencies of science? Here is a physiologist, fully conscious of the magnitude of his task, to whom the government or a university has confided the direction of a laboratory, who finds himself face to face with a problem needing to be solved. It is impossible to limit his efforts and to lay down principles from which he couldnot turn aside. Just as he is referred to for the purchase of his instruments and the nomination of his staff, so must he be left full latitude in the arrangement of his experiments. Nothing is so pernicious in matters of science as official regulation; it takes away all initiative, and does not allow the genius of the inventor to have full play.
As a matter of fact, even in England, the only country where up to the present the conditions of vivisection have been regulated by law, no one has ventured to confine the initiative of the experimenter within narrow regulations. And it is fortunate that no one has ventured to define the limits of experimental investigation, for most excellent work is due to contemporary English Physiologists—Schäfer, Horsley, Sherrington, Langley, Bayliss, Starling, Stirling, etc. They have been able to pursue their researches freely, to the very great advantage of our science.
One should not, then, think of prohibiting such or such a proceeding in vivisection. It may even be dangerous to absolutely prohibitvivisections without anæsthesia. I make no mystery of my opinion on this point, since I have distinctly declared further back that no sensitive animal should ever be operated upon. I regard as a moral error all vivisection made on an animal capable of suffering. But I would leave the physiologist to be the judge in the matter. I do not believe the law should take his place; for perhaps cases will occur where anæsthesia is impossible, and he cannot be placed under the hard alternative of not making an experiment which his conscience as asavantjudges to be useful, or of disobeying the law.
Moreover, how are the many possible conditions of an experiment to be precisely laid down? Is the law to indicate the kind of anæsthetic to be used, and the degree of anæsthesia to be attained? Is it to prohibit all experiments on toxic actions? Many insoluble difficulties would be encountered, the sole result of which would be to paralyse thesavantin his researches or to cause him to break the laws of his country.
And yet I recognise that regulation is indispensable, but it ought not to bear on the natureof the experiment; it should deal solely with the person experimenting.
I believe the right of practising vivisection should not be accorded to every citizen, to every medical student; it should not be permissible for any chance person to take a dog, to fasten him down on the operating table, and to experiment on the brain, the glands, the muscles of that unfortunate animal, for that chance person is, in all probability, a clumsy and ignorant man. Vivisection may not be undertaken in a light-hearted fashion. After all, science would lose nothing if such an experiment were not made, and I see no advantage in encouraging attempts of this sort which are condemned beforehand to be fruitless.
But in a laboratory of physiology, under the direction of the professor and his assistants, under their moral responsibility, vivisection should not be prohibited; the number of vivisections should not be limited, and no restrictions ought to be imposed.
As I have no intention of formulating or drawing up regulations or enacting laws, I shall not indicate the penalties to which thosewho violate the law should be liable. I shall content myself with enunciating this double principle: entire liberty in vivisection for professors of physiology and their assistants; prohibition of vivisection for all others.
Let us now leave the opinions of anti-vivisectionists, and carry the problem on to higher ground. Let us see what are the rights of man in Nature, and what is the purpose of human life.
Amidst all the unsettled and contradictory theories accumulated by philosophers, thinkers and founders of religion, there remains scarcely any fixed and immutable theory save that of one dominating principle: The respect and love of our brothers in humanity. All else is contestable and contested. Though we are unable to demonstrate it formally, there is one universal moral law (the great Categorical Imperative of Kant) which commands us to be just and beneficent to our fellow-creatures. All the most subtle sophisms will never be able to persuade me that I ought not, above all things,to feel solicitude for the lives and happiness of men.
I willingly admit that beside man there is the animal,our inferior brotheras it has been ingeniously called, so that we have also our duties towards these inferior brothers. Butthis must never be to the detriment of our real brothers. It seems to me insane to consider the life of a cat of more account than that of a man; the pain of a dog than that of a child. All the more so because living matter, if I may use that expression, possesses varying degrees of perfection; from the sea-weed up to man there are successive stages of living forms which constitute an uninterrupted chain ending in its final phase, which is man.
Man, by his power of thought, and consequently of suffering, by the conception which he is able to make of the non-self, by his faculties of abstraction and the notion of good and evil, is vastly superior to every other living being. So that, for respecting, defending and loving men, I have not only the reason that man is my brother, but also that this brother is superior to every other living thing.
That is why a moral code must be essentially human, having for its highest object the happiness of other men. Every other code of morals, having in view a different purpose supporting itself on metaphysical lucubrations or haunted by puerile anxieties, such as the adoration of beasts, appears to me to bear the stamp of fetishism. An unknown power has caused us to be born; we are entirely ignorant of our destinies, we know not why we were born, why we die, why, following in the wake of countless generations, we transmit the vital spark to countless succeeding generations. We know nothing of all that; but it matters little from the point of view of our duty. Duty is independent of all theory. No mere religion is necessary to constitute a moral code.
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, or rather our moral code, will be the religion of humanity. It does not seem to me possible to conceive of any other.
And when we say humanity, we take that word in its largest acceptation. It is not a question of compatriots, nor of Europeans, nor even of humanity of to-day. It is also a question of thehumanity of the future. We have our duties towards the man of to-day; but we have also our duties towards the man who will live in the centuries to come. We should prepare the way for a happier and better humanity. Our task is not limited to the present hour; it extends to all those human beings who will come after us. Inasmuch as we of to-day, at every moment of our lives, benefit from the accumulated services of our ancestors, so the men to come will profit by the benefits which we are endeavouring to prepare for them.
Assuredly, Humanity will not be eternal, and Science seems to prove that a time will come when the sun's heat will be insufficient to develop life on the surface of our puny planet. A time will come when the earth will have cooled down and become like our pale satellite, the moon, a dead star, where the debris of extinct multitudinous civilisations will disappear under the ice. But what matter! We have not to trouble ourselves about those far-off times. We have to think of the man of the coming centuries, and, at the same time, it goes without saying, of the man of to-day.
To lessen their misery, to make their existence less lamentable, to develop within them the sentiments of justice and brotherhood, to secure their moral welfare and their material welfare, that is our strict and sole duty. I recognise no other.
Now, there is but one way open to attain this noble goal: Science. We are plunged in an ocean of gloom. All is dark, unknown, disturbing. We have not yet understood anything of the blind forces surrounding us on all sides. We are but feeble beings cast into the midst of sovereign powers which overwhelm and bear us down. Now, to avoid being completely and definitely crushed out of existence, it is necessary to penetrate into the nature of these forces. Alas! we shall never penetrate into them, for it is madness to think that a particle of the whole can ever fully cognise the whole; but we may at least demonstrate some facts, fathom some phenomena, perhaps trace a few of the features of certain laws. That is enough to make us instantly the masters of matter and not its slaves.
Every new truth at once brings about anamelioration in human conditions. It may be said that ourhappiness is made up of truth. Let us suppose what is improbable, that is to say, that we have come to know all the laws of Nature, should we not immediately become all-powerful? Should we not be the sovereign masters of disease and pain, perhaps of old age and death?
Such, indeed, appears to be the conviction of the human societies which assign a preponderating rôle to Science. They have understood that there is no better future in store for the human being than that which Science will bring about for him.
To be able to appreciate the extent to which the man of to-day is materially and morally happier than the man of past ages, we have only to compare the present state of our civilisation with the state of past civilisations. We may say that an English labourer of to-day has a much easier existence than had an Italian prince of the fourteenth century. Everywhere, the progress achieved by Science has entered into the life of each individual. We find it in the book we read, in the electricity which givesus light, in the train or the steamer which carries us to the uttermost corners of the earth in little time and at little cost. It is the same thing also with medicaments, which are certainly able to lessen the pain of disease.
Moral progress has kept pace with material progress. At the same time that matter has been overcome, our customs have become gentler; individual liberty is a sacred thing; each citizen takes part in the decisions of his government; there is no longer either slavery or torture or tyranny of conscience. In a word, the man of to-day is happier and more powerful than the man of bygone days.
This happiness has not been acquired through any providential "miracles." No God came down from His Heaven to alleviate human misfortunes. It is man, and man alone, who, by his genius and his labours, has been able to make himself master of the forces which, even yesterday, held him in bondage. And we cannot be too grateful to our fathers for their immense and fruitful labours, by which they succeeded in constructing the society in the midst of which we live. It is still wretched enough, this societyof ours, afflicted with crimes and horrors, the infamy of which we understand full well; but however wretched it may be, it is a thousand times less wretched than was society of yore.
Therefore, this formal conclusion may at once be deduced; we must do for our descendants what our fathers did for us. We would be without excuse if we rested content to benefit from the works of our predecessors without ourselves also creating something, without leaving, by means of our personal labours, a better lot to our descendants. The man who has not understood this supreme duty is truly unworthy of being a man.
Verily, every individual, when he has arrived at the end of his life, should examine his conscience and ask himself if in the humble sphere of his action, he has not, even he also, contributed a stone to the human edifice, if he has not done his share in promoting and increasing the forces of humanity.
Since matters stand thus, since the development of Science is the fundamental condition of the happiness of man, we must resolutely put Science at the basis of every civilisation. Alas!it has not been so up to the present; and if we study the development of human societies, we see that they are above all things attracted to war. Science has had only the leavings. But the time has come when man should no longer believe that the principle of morality is man's struggle against man. That was the history of bye-gone times. The history of to-day, and especially the history of to-morrow, is the struggle of man against matter, the subjection of natural forces to our intelligence. And there is no other way to subjugate these forces than by learning to know them.
Then Science will be put in the foreground. And without making any classification which distinguishes between the sciences, which are all useful, beautiful, and noble, for all contain a portion of truth, we shall be permitted to say that the Science of life is one of the most useful, the most noble, and the most beautiful.
Now, the Science of life is Physiology, taking physiology in its widest sense, that is to say, the study of normal beings and of diseased beings. It is proved by innumerable facts, facts which only bad faith and ignorance can call intoquestion, that our physiological knowledge is due, in a very large measure, to experimentation. If in thought we suppressed the scientific results which experimentation has conquered, we should have but an inferior science, within the reach of the Brahmans may be, but unworthy of our present scientific standing. We should know nothing of the circulation of the blood, nor the function of the blood corpuscles, nor the formation of sugar, nor the innervation of the glands, nor the contagiousness of disease, nor the power of poisons; we should be reduced to the notions of Hippocrates, we should be less advanced than Galileo, the first ingenious experimenter who indicated, less by his writings than by his experiments, that the basis of physiology, and consequently of the whole of pathology, is experimentation on animals.
Those most sincere persons who wish to banish experimentation from Science are consequently, I do not fear to say it, standing in the position of direct contradiction to true morality. To refuse man the right to study living nature, is as though we declared that living nature ought not to be known. Alas!anti-vivisectionists will not listen. In vain do we tell them that we, physiologists, preserve man from disease; that we have alleviated the ills of our human brothers. They stop up their ears; they shut their eyes; they have no pity for the sufferings of human beings. It seems as though the tears of their brethren were profoundly indifferent to them. Is this a high morality? Is this a realisation of their duty as men? They cover with opprobrium the names of Harvey and Jenner, Bernard and Pasteur, Spallanzani and Helmholtz. What base ingratitude! It is these great men who have turned aside many excruciating sufferings from humanity; it is these grand men who have bestowed a better lot on so many human beings. When, therefore, they dare to calumniate the masters who have scattered over us so much beneficence, anti-vivisectionists seem to me to be not only the most ungrateful but even the cruellest of men.
Fortunately the conquering march of Science will not be hindered. We shall never return to those sinister times when our great Vesalius had to forfeit his life for having dared todissect a human corpse. We shall continue to make Science advance towards its great aim, the good of man.
And this is the moment which has been chosen for striving to arrest the march of Science: when epidemic disease, such as the plague and cholera, is checked; tuberculosis half-conquered; diptheria rendered inoffensive; operations become almost harmless; cancer on the eve of being understood and subjugated! And are we to stop there? Are we not to seek to fathom the many problems still waiting to be solved, and on which depend the lives of so many human beings, and so much human happiness? Do you believe that Science has come to an end? Certainly we already know a great deal; but what we know is as nothing compared to what we do not know.
An immense domain of unknown truths lies open to our activity. And we are able to forsee what inexpressible benefits these new truths will scatter over suffering humanity. Consequently, everyone, every man enamoured of goodness and justice, should be filled with respect for Science, and set all his hopes on her.
At the same time, however great may be my adoration for Science, it must not be at the expense of human personalities, or, let us say it distinctly, at the expense of animal personalities, which although uncertain and indistinct, still merit a share, and a large share, of justice and of pity.
As for human personalities, without the slightest doubt, we have not the right to sacrifice an innocent creature for Science. Every human being ought to be treated with respect, and we have not the right to kill and martyrise a human being even if his death and his martyrdom might serve the cause of Science.
As for animal personalities, the question becomes much more doubtful. For inferior beings with indistinct consciousness, and, without a doubt powerless to perceive pain, no scruple should hold us back. But if it concerns beings nearer to ourselves, such as monkeys, cats, dogs, horses, all certainly capable of feeling pain, we must be chary of inflicting pain, and experiment only after having totally abolished in them all sensation of pain. But under penalty of fallinginto fetishism, we must not fear to use the life of these beings in order to prolong the life of man. Every time we propose to make an experiment, it is as though we put this question to ourselves: is this dog worth more than a man? or than a hundred men? or than the whole of humanity to come? Thus put, the problem bears only one solution: Avoid giving pain to the animal on condition that it is not at the cost of innumerable human pains. Moreover, it is the same here as in every question we may wish to investigate: Each of the two adversaries set out from a just principle, incontestably just. But each one pushes the just principle so far that he ends by transforming it into a colossal absurdity.
In the present case, the anti-vivisectionists say: pain is an evil, even the obscure pain of the lowest animal is an evil. Now, we should do no evil; therefore we should not at any price inflict any pain whatsoever, however light it may be, on even the lowest animal. That is their syllogism. It cannot be replied to, for it is perfectly correct.
We on our side say: The suffering of manis a sacred thing. Science casts aside suffering from man. Therefore we ought to sacrifice inferior beings to the cause of Science, that is to say to the happiness of man. There again lies an irreproachable syllogism.
But these two syllogisms, if driven up to their ultimate conclusions, would lead to nonsense on the one hand and cruelty on the other. If we were to listen only to the friends of animals, we should not have the right to bleed a horse in order to save the lives of 400 children; and this contention would be both foolish and cruel.
If we were to listen only to the friends of man, we should have the right, simply as dictated by our might and fancy, to cause suffering to dogs, cats, monkeys, all innocent and sensitive animals, under pretext that these tortures are capable of alleviating human pain. That also would be folly and cruelty.
Fortunately, wisdom avoids both extremes; it fears the brutality of hard and fast syllogisms, which are absurd even by their very severity. Yes, there are the rights of man; yes, there are the rights of animals; and all our efforts shouldconsist in holding an even balance between these two sometimes antagonistic rights. Do not let us push our reasonings to their logical but absurd extremes. Pre-occupation for the welfare of future humanity and of Science does not authorise us to be wicked and unjust towards the men of to-day, even towards one single man. So that, notwithstanding my worship of Science, I would not sacrifice human lives to her. And, notwithstanding all my respect for animal pain, I would look upon the man as supremely ridiculous, even guilty, who would not innoculate a microbe into a rabbit to achieve a great discovery for humanity. Wisdom, therefore, consists precisely in this: to know where to stop in pushing a reasoning to extremes. This is what physiologists have sought and are seeking to do.
In any case, and as a last conclusion, Science ought not to be sacrificed. Now, the death-knell of science will have sounded whensavantsare prevented from pursuing their investigations on living beings. We who, in full confidence, hope for a happier and better humanity, will never resign ourselves to closing our laboratories, to burning our books. On the contrary, we aredetermined, every one of us, to continue our hard labours for the great good of the men of to-day and of the generations to come.
And when we speak of Science, we do not mean only the material benefits she scatters abroad; we think also of her power as a moral force. Material and moral conquests walk hand in hand. Science is the basis of the moral law. The universal consciousness of humanity grows greater by the acquisition of new truths. Each individual, by the very fact that he loves truth, has come to understand the moral ideal which should be ever before his eyes.
And then, in a just measure, full of pity for all suffering, but placing the suffering of man at a higher price than the suffering of the animal, we shall strive to make the respect of animal suffering accord with the search for the splendid and indispensable and divineTRUTH.
In the various works, notices, discourses, etc., which have been published upon Vivisection, generally against Vivisection, I find various erroneous assertions which it is important should be pointed out. I will do so briefly.
There is, however, one assertion which appears fairly just to me. This is that in treatises on physiology, sufficient mention is not made of Vivisection, of its limits and of its abuses. At the beginning of a treatise on physiology, the author should distinctly declare there is always cruelty in vivisection conducted without chloroform or chloralose; the author should indicate that these anæsthetics ought to be administered under such or such conditions. Before initiating medical students into the study of life, it is also well to teach them to have respect for animal suffering. I would that it might be thoroughly understood that it is a matter of absolute necessity to operate upon the animal; and that whenthe physiologist resigns himself to this necessity he ought to perform the operation with sufficient humanity to prevent the animal from suffering. I willingly recognise that the absence of this first moral precept is a great gap in most treatises on physiology.
This, however, is about all I can concede to anti-vivisectionists; for truly they indulge in such queer, extraordinary assertions that we are completely disconcerted. Some of these fanatics pretend, for example, that physiologists should practise vivisection upon themselves. To torture a dog is as criminal as to torture a child, according to them; and animal suffering is as much to be respected as human suffering! Truly such a paradox cannot be taken seriously; if it were admitted, evidently the question is settled. But it cannot be admitted, and the whole of our argument rests upon this principle, which appears quite evident, that living beings occupy different positions in the hierarchy of nature.
Let us take a besieged city reduced to famine: will anyone pretend that the soldiers must be sacrificed before the horses, the mules, etc. Yet the case is exactly the same. It is in order toavoid the death of human beings that mice and guinea-pigs are put to death.
To deny the difference in rank of living beings is to deny evidence. A frog is a nobler animal than a sea-urchin; a dog is a nobler animal than a frog; for there are degrees in the intelligence, and consequently, in the capacity to suffer, and in thequalityof suffering among the four animal groups: the sea-urchin, the frog, the dog, and man.
Anti-vivisectionists do not admit reflex movements (which, moreover, they do not understand); and they bewail the dogs that Goltz and Ewald subjected to cerebral mutilations which took away all intellectual spontaneity and prevented them from eating spontaneously. But in those very dogs, precisely because there is no spontaneity, so there is no longer any consciousness of pain. They are, therefore, of all the beings in creation those which deserve the least commiseration; for they are protected against pain by that very ablation of the brain, the seat of pain.
We are told that it is through cowardice, through the fear of disease, that vivisection ispractised. But fear of disease is not cowardice. I am neither poltroon nor coward, but I would be very sorry to be attacked by tuberculosis or cancer. I do not blush to confess that it would be very disagreeable for me to be hanged, though hanging is much less painful than tuberculosis or cancer. If it were necessary to have a hanged victim, I would much prefer that a rabbit were taken in preference to myself; and I would certainly not put my own neck in the cord to save a dog from torture.
The state of mind of anti-vivisectionists appears to me rather singular, since they are not at all afraid of disease as far as man is concerned, but they have great fear of it for animals. If pain is but an empty word, according to the celebrated phrase of Zeno, why not apply that fine maxim to the animal?
Sir James Thornton (The Principal Claims on behalf of Vivisection, London, 1907), has endeavoured to compile a list of the contradictions to be found in the treatises of physiology. He could have added considerably to the length of this chapter, for the contradictions are innumerable; which only proves, not thatvivisection is useless, but that it is difficult. What would chemists say if it were maintained that chemical analysis was absurd because of the contradictions between chemists? They would, and rightly so, continue to make analyses; for they know that analysis is a necessary, though an imperfect, instrument. In the same manner, we shall continue to practise vivisection, though we know right well that vivisection is an imperfect, though a necessary, instrument.
In the course of a recent debate on vivisection, a voice was heard to call out that Lister was a brute. That "crowns" everything, and one would think that nothing more inept could be imagined.
Alas! something more inept still has been said, and I hand over this prodigious and audacious assertion to the judgment of every man of heart and common sense. It refers to bacteriology. The author, after having said that microbes are not the cause of disease, takes refuge behind the opinion of Lawson Tait (quoted by Mona Caird,The Inquisition of Science, p. 20).
"Such experiments never have succeeded, never can: and they have, as in the cases of Koch, Pasteur, and Lister, not only hindered true progress, but they have covered our profession with ridicule."
That is something which may well confound us, is it not? and I believe those great benefactors of humanity, Koch, Pasteur and Lister, may indeed murmur: "Forgive them; for they know not what they say."
To sum up: the objections of anti-vivisectionists are irrefutable if we admit, (1) that man has not the right to kill an animal either in self-defence or for nourishment; (2) that the suffering of an animal is as worthy of respect as the suffering of a man; and (3) that the misery of one individual is as sacred as the misery of a thousand individuals. No logical reply can be made to these three assertions, which, according to my reasoning, constitute an offence against the most elementary common sense. But I doubt very much if we shall ever arrive at demonstrating that it is better to allow one hundred children to die from diphtheria rather than draw a little blood from a horse; or thatwe should practise vivisection on man so as to alleviate the diseases of dogs.
Concerning the polemics of anti-vivisectionists as to the uselessness of physiology, and the contradictions of physiologists, they are nothing but a tissue of error and ignorance.