"Never to blend our pleasure or our prideWith sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."
"Never to blend our pleasure or our prideWith sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."
Is not this a sentiment in which even science may fitly share? Are we justified in neglecting the evidence she offers, purchased in the past at such immeasurable agonies, and in demanding that year after year new victims shall be subjected to torture, only to demonstrate what none of us doubt? That is the chief question. For, if all compromise be persistently rejected by physiologists, there is danger that some day, impelled by the advancing growth of humane sentiment, society may confound in one common condemnation all experiments of this nature, and make the whole practice impossible, except in secret and as a crime.
Omitting entirely any consideration of the ethics of vivisection, the only points to which in the present article the attention of the reader is invited are those in which scientific inquirers may be supposed to have a common interest.
I. One danger to which scientific truth seems to be exposed is a peculiar tendency to underestimate the numberless uncertainties and contradictions created by experimentation upon living beings. Judging from the enthusiasm of its advocates, one would think that by this method of interrogating nature all fallacies can be detected, all doubts determined. But, on the contrary, the result ofexperimentation, in many directions, is to plunge the observer into the abyss of uncertainty. Take, for example, one of the simplest and yet most important questions possible,—the degree of sensibility in the lower animals. Has an infinite number of experiments enabled physiologists to determine for us the mere question of pain? Suppose an amateur experimenter in London, desirous of performing some severe operations upon frogs, to hesitate because of the extreme painfulness of his methods, what replies would he be likely to obtain from the highest scientific authorities of England as to the sensibility of these creatures? We may fairly judge their probable answers to such inquiries from their evidence already given before a royal commission.[20]
Dr. Carpenter would doubtless repeat his opinion that "frogs have extremely little perception of pain;" and in the evidence of thatexperienced physiologist George Henry Lewes, he would find the cheerful assurance, "I do not believe that frogs suffer pain at all." Our friend applies, let us suppose, to Dr. Klein, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, who despises the sentimentality which regards animal suffering as of the least consequence; and this enthusiastic vivisector informs him that, in his English experience, the experiment which caused the greatest pain without anæsthetics was the cauterization of the cornea of a frog. Somewhat confused at finding that a most painful experiment can be performed upon an animal that does not suffer he relates this to Dr. Swaine Taylor, of Guy's Hospital, who does not think that Klein's experiment would cause severe suffering; but of another—placing a frog in cold water and raising the temperature to about 100°—"that," says Doctor Taylor, "would be a cruel experiment: I cannot see what purpose it can answer." Before leaving Guy's Hospital, our inquiring friend meets Dr. Pavy, one of the most celebrated physiologistsin England, who tells him that in this experiment, stigmatized by his colleague as "cruel," the frog would in reality suffer very little; that if we ourselves were treated to a bath gradually raised from a medium temperature to the boiling point, "I think we should not feel any pain;" that were we plunged at once into boiling water, "even then," says the enthusiastic and scientific Dr. Pavy, "I do not think pain would be experienced!" Our friend goes then to Dr. Sibson, of St. Mary's Hospital, who as a physiologist of many years' standing, sees no objection to freezing, starving, or baking animals alive; but he declares of boiling a frog, "That is a horrible idea, and I certainly am not going to defend it." Perplexed more than ever, he goes to Dr. Lister, of King's College, and is astonished upon being told "that the mere holding of a frog in your warm hand is about as painful as any experiment probably that you would perform." Finally, one of the strongest advocates of vivisections, Dr. Anthony, pupil of Sir Charles Bell, would exclaim, if a mereexposition of the lungs of the frog were referred to, "Fond as I am of physiology, I would not do that for the world!"
Now, what has our inquirer learned by his appeal to science? Has he gained any clear and absolute knowledge? Hardly two of the experimenters named agree upon one simple yet most important preliminary of research—the sensibility to pain of a single species of animals.
Let us interrogate scientific opinion a little further on this question of sensibility. Is there any difference in animals as regards susceptibility to pain? Dr. Anthony says that we may take the amount of intelligence in animals as a fair measure of their sensibility—that the pain one would suffer would be in proportion to its intelligence. Dr. Rutherford, Edinburgh, never performs an experiment upon a cat or a spaniel if he can help it, because they are so exceedingly sensitive; and Dr. Horatio Wood, of Philadelphia, tells us that the nervous system of a cat is far more sensitive than that of the rabbit. Onthe other hand, Dr. Lister, of King's College, is not aware of any such difference in sensibility in animals, and Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew's, finds cats such very good animals to operate with that he on one occasion used ninety in making a single experiment.
Sir William Gull thinks "there are but few experiments performed on living creatures where sensation is not removed," yet Dr. Rutherford admits "about half" his experiments to have been made upon animals sensitive to pain. Professor Rolleston, of Oxford University, tells us "the whole question of anæsthetizing animals has an element of uncertainty"; and Professor Rutherford declares it "impossible to say" whether even artificial respiration is painful or not, "unless the animal can speak." Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew's, says of that most painful experiment, poisoning by strychnine, that it cannot be efficiently shown if the animal be under chloroform. Dr. Davy, of Guy's, on the contrary, always gives chloroform, and finds it noimpediment to successful demonstration, Is opium an anæsthetic? Claude Bernard declares that sensibility exists even though the animal be motionless: "Il sent la douleur, mais il a, pour ainsi dire, perdu l'idee de la defense."[21]But Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew's hospital, London, has no hesitation whatever in contradicting this statement "emphatically, however high an authority it may be."
Curare, a poison invented by South American Indians for their arrows, is much used in physiological laboratories to paralyze the motor nerves, rendering an animal absolutely incapable of the slightest disturbing movement. Does it at the same time destroy sensation, or is the creature conscious of every pang? Claude Bernard, of Paris, Sharpey, of London, and Flint, of New York[22]all agree that sensation isnotabolished; on the other hand, Rutherford regards curare as a partial anæsthetic, and Huxley stronglyintimates that Bernard in thus deciding from experiments that it does not affect the cerebral hemispheres or consciousness, "jumped at a conclusionfor which neither he nor anybody else had any scientific justification." This is extraordinary language for one experimentalist to use regarding others! If it is possible that such men as Claude Bernard and Professor Flint have "jumped at" one utterly unscientific conclusion, notwithstanding the most painstaking of vivisections, what security have we that other of our theories in physiology now regarded as absolutely established may not be one day as severely ridiculed by succeeding investigators? Is it, after all, true, that the absolute certainty of our most important deductions must remain forever hidden "unless the animal can speak"?
II. Between advocating State supervision of painful vivisection, and proposing with Mr. Bergh the total suppression of all experiments, painful or otherwise, there is manifestly a very wide distinction. Unfortunately, the suggestion of any interference whatever invariablyrouses the anger of those most interested—an indignation as unreasonable, to say the least, as that of the merchant who refuses a receipt for money just paid to him, on the ground that a request for a written acknowledgement is a reflection upon his honesty. I cannot see how otherwise than by State supervision we are to reach abuses which confessedly exist. Can we trust the sensitiveness and conscience of every experimenter? Nobody claims this. One of the leading physiologists in this country, Dr. John C. Dalton, admits "that vivisection may be, and has been, abused by reckless, unfeeling, or unskillful persons;" that he himself has witnessed abroad, in a veterinary institution, operations than which "nothing could be more shocking." And yet the unspeakable atrocities at Alfort, to which, apparently, Dr. Dalton alludes, were defended upon the very ground he occupies to-day in advocating experiments of the modern laboratory and classroom; for the Academie des Sciences decided that there was "no occasion to take anynotice of complaints; that in the future, as in the past, vivisectional experiments must be left entirely to the judgment of scientific men." What seemed "atrocious" to the more tender-hearted Anglo-Saxon was pronounced entirely justifiable by the French Academy of Science.
A curious question suggests itself in connection with this point. There can be little doubt, I think, that the sentiment of compassion and of sympathy with suffering is more generally diffused among all classes of Great Britain than elsewhere in Europe; and one cannot help wondering what our place might be, were it possible to institute any reliable comparison of national humanity. Should we be found in all respects as sensitive as the English people? Would indignation and protest be as quickly and spontaneously evoked among us by a cruel act? The question may appear an ungracious one, yet it seems to me there exists some reason why it should be plainly asked. There is a certain experiment—one of the most excruciatingthat can be performed—which consists in exposing the spinal cord of the dog for the purpose of demonstrating the functions of the spinal nerves. It is one, by the way, which Dr. Wilder forgot to enumerate in his summary of the "four kinds of experiments," since it is not the "cutting operation" which forms its chief peculiarity or to which special objection would be made. At present all this preliminary process is generally performed under anæsthetics: it is an hour or two later, when the animal has partly recovered from the severe shock of the operation, that the wound is reopened and the experiment begins. It was during a class demonstration of this kind by Magendie, before the introduction of ether, that the circumstance occurred which one hesitates to think possible in a person retaining a single spark of humanity or pity. "I recall to mind," says Dr. Latour, who was present at the time, "a poor dog, the roots of whose vertebral nerves Magendie desired to lay bareto demonstrate Bell's theory, which he claimed as his own. The dog, mutilated and bleeding twice escaped from under the implacable knife, and threw its front paws around Magendie's neck, licking, as if to soften his murderer and ask for mercy! I confess I was unable to endure that heartrending spectacle."
It was probably in reference to this experiment that Sir Charles Bell, the greatest English physiologist of our century, writing to his brother in 1822, informs him that he hesitates to go on with his investigations. "You may think me silly," he adds, "but I cannot perfectly convince myself that I am authorized in nature or religion to do these cruelties." Now, what do English physiologists and vivisectors of the present day think of the repetition of this experiment solely as a class demonstration?
They have candidly expressed their opinions before a royal commission. Dr. David Ferrier, of King's college, noted for his experiments upon the brain of monkeys, affirms hisbelief that "students would rebel" at the sight of a painful experiment. Dr. Rutherford, who certainly dared do all that may become a physiologist, confesses mournfully, "I dare notshow an experiment upon a dog or rabbit before students, when the animal is not anæsthetized." Dr. Pavy, of Guy's Hospital, asserts that a painful experiment introduced before a class "would not be tolerated for a moment." Sir William Gull, M. D., believes that the repetition of an operation like this upon the spinal nerves would excite the reprobation alike of teacher, pupils, and the public at large. Michael Foster, of Cambridge University, who minutely describes all the details of the experiment on recurrent sensibility in the "Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory," nevertheless tells us, "I have not performed it, and have never seen it done," partly, as he confesses, "from horror at the pain." And finally Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, physiologist at University College, London, states with the utmostemphasis, in regard to the performance of this demonstration on the spinal cord, "I am perfectly certain that no physiologist—none of the leading men in Germany, for example—would exhibit an experiment of that kind."
Now mark the contrast. This experiment—which we are told passes even the callousness of Germany to repeat; which every leading champion of vivisection in Great Britain reprobates for medical teaching; which some of them shrink even from seeing, themselves, from horror at the tortures necessarily inflicted; which the most ruthless among themdare notexhibit to the young men of England,—this experiment has been performed publicly again and again in American medical colleges, without exciting, so far as we know, even a whisper of protest or the faintest murmur of remonstrance! The proof is to be found in the published statements of the experimenter himself. In his "Text-Book of Physiology," Professor Flint says, "Magendie showed verysatisfactorily that the posterior roots (of the spinal cord) were exclusively sensory, and this fact has been confirmed by more recent observations upon the higher classes of animals. We have ourselves frequently exposed and irritated the roots of the nerves in dogs,in public demonstrationsin experiments on the recurrent sensibility, ... and in another series of observations."[23]
This is the experience of a single professional teacher; but it is improbable that this experiment has been shown only to the students of a single medical college in the United States; it has doubtless been repeated again and again in different colleges throughout the country. If Englishmen are, then, so extremely sensitive as Ferrier, Gull, and Burdon-Sanderson would have us believe, we must necessarily conclude that the sentiment of compassion is far greater in Britain than in America. Have we drifted backward inhumanity? Have American students learned to witness, without protest, tortures at the sight of which English students would rebel? We are told that there is no need of any public sensitiveness on this subject. We should trust entirely, as they do in France,—at Alfort, for example,—"to the judgment of the investigator." There must be no lifting of the veil to the outside multitude; for the priests of this unpitying science there must be as absolute immunity from criticism or inquiry as was ever demanded before the shrine of Delphi or the altars of Baal. "Let them exercise their solemn office," demands Dr. Wilder, "not only unrestrained by law, but upheld by public sentiment."
For myself, I cannot believe this position is tenable. Nothing seems to me more certain than the results that must follow if popular sentiment in this country shall knowingly sustain the public demonstration of an experiments in pain, which can find no defender among the physiologists of Great Britain. Ithas been my fortune to know something of the large hospitals of Europe; and I confess I do not know a single one in countries where painful vivisection flourishes, unchecked by law, wherein the poor and needy sick are treated with the sympathy, the delicacy, or even the decency, which so universally characterize the hospitals of England. When Magendie, operating for cataract, plunged his needle to the bottom of his patient's eye, that he might note upon a human being the effect produced by mechanical irritation of the retina, he demonstrated how greatly the zeal of the enthusiast may impair the responsibility of the physician and the sympathy of man for man.
III. The utility of vivisection in advancing therapeutics, despite much argument, still remains an open question. No one is so foolish as to deny the possibility of future usefulness to any discovery whatever; but there is a distinction, very easily slurred over in the eagerness of debate, between present applicabilityand remotely potential service. If the pains inflicted on animals are absolutely necessary to the protection of human life and the advancement of practical skill in medicine, should sentiment be permitted to check investigation? An English prelate, the Bishop of Peterborough, speaking in Parliament on this subject, once told the House of Lords that "it was very difficult to decide what was unnecessary pain," and as an example of the perplexities which arose in his own mind he mentioned "the case of the wretched man who was convicted of skinning cats alive, because their skins were more valuable when taken from the living animal than from the dead one. The extra money," added the Bishop, "got the man a dinner!"[24]Whether in this particular case the excuse was well received by the judge, the reverend prelate neglected to inform us; but it is certain that the plea for painful experimentation rests substantially on the same basis. Out of theagonies of sentient brutes we are to pluck the secret of longer living and the art of surer triumph over intractable disease.
But has this hope been fulfilled? Pasteur, we are told, has claimed the discovery of a cure for hydrophobia through experiments on animals. It may be well worth its cost if only true; but we cannot forget that its practical value is by no means yet demonstrated. Aside from this, has physiological experimentation during the last quarter of a century contributed such marked improvements in therapeutic methods that we find certain and tangible evidence thereof in the diminishing fatality of any disease? Can one mention a single malady which thirty years ago resisted every remedial effort, to which the more enlightened science of to-day can offer hopes of recovery? These seem to me perfectly legitimate and fair questions, and, fortunately, in one respect, capable of a scientific reply. I suppose the opinion of the late Claude Bernard, of Paris, would be generallyaccepted as that of the highest scientific authority on the utility of vivisection in "practical medicine;" but he tells us that it is hardly worth while to make the inquiry. "Without doubt," he confessed, "our hands are empty to-day, although our mouths are full of legitimate promises for the future."
Was Claude Bernard correct in this opinion as to the "empty hands?" If scientific evidence is worth anything, it points to the appalling conclusion that,notwithstanding all the researches of physiology, the chief forms of chronic disease exhibit to-day in England a greater fatality than thirty years ago. In the following table I have indicated the average annual mortality, per million inhabitants, of certain diseases,first, for the period of five years from 1850 to 1854, andsecondly, for the period twenty-five years later, from 1875 to 1879. The authority is beyond question; the facts are collected from the report to Parliament of the Registrar-general of England:
This is certainly a most startling exhibit, when we remember that from only these few causes about half ofallthe deaths in England annually occur, and that from them result the deaths of two-thirds of the persons, of both sexes, who reach the age of twenty years.[25]What are the effects here discernibleof Bernard's experiments upon diabetes? of Brown-Sequard's upon epilepsy and paralysis? of Flint's and Pavy's on diseases of the liver? of Ferrier's researches upon the functions of the brain? Let us appeal from the heated enthusiasm of the experimenter to the stern facts of the statistician. Why, so far from having obtained the least mastery over those malignant forces which seem forever to elude and baffle our art, they are actually gaining upon us; every one of these forms of disease is more fatal to-day in England than thirty years ago; during 1879 over sixty thousandmoredeaths resulted from these maladies alone than would have occurred had the rate of mortality from them been simply that which prevailed during the benighted period of 1850 to 1854! True, during later years there has been a diminished mortality in England, but it is from the lesser prevalence of zymotic diseases, which no one to-day pretends to cure; while the organicdiseases show a constant tendency to increase. Part of this may be due to more accurate diagnosis and clearer definition of mortality causes: but this will not explain a phenomenon which is too evident to be overlooked.
"It is a fact," says the Registrar-general, in his report for 1879, "that while mortality in early life has been very notably diminished,the mortality of persons in middle or advanced life has been steadily rising for a long period of years." It is probable that the same story would be told by the records of France, Germany, and other European countries; it is useless, of course, to refer to America, since in regard to statistical information we still lag behind every country which pretends to be civilized.[26]Undoubtedly it would be a false assumption which from these facts should deduce retrogression in medical art or deny advance and improvement; but they certainly indicate that the boasted superiority of modern medicine over the skill of our fathers,due to physiological researches, is not sustained by the only impartial authority to which science can appeal for evidence of results.
What then is the substance of the whole matter? It seems to me the following conclusions are justified by the facts presented.
I. All experiments upon living animals may be divided into two general classes; 1st those which produce pain,—slight, brief, severe or atrociously acute and prolonged; and 2nd, those experiments which are performed under complete anæsthesia from which either death ensues during unconsciousness, or entire recovery may follow.
II. The majority of vivisections requisite for purposes of teaching physiological factsmaybe so carried on as to take life with less pain or inconvenience to the animal than is absolutely necessary in order to furnish meat for our tables. Those who would make it a penal offense to submit to a class of college students the unconscious and painless demonstrationof functional activity of the heart, for example, and yet demand for the gratification of appetite the daily slaughter of oxen and sheep without anæsthetics, and without any attempt to minimize the agony of terror, fear and pain—may not be inconsistent. But it is a view the writer cannot share.
III. Prohibition of all experiments may be fairly demanded by those who believe that the enthusiastic ardor of the scientific experimenter or lecturer, will outweigh all considerations of good faith, provided success or failure of his experiment depend on the consciousness of pain. In other words, that the experimenter himself, as a rule,cannot be trusted to obey the law, should the law restrict.
This also is an extreme position.
IV. Absolute liberty in the matter of painful experiments has produced admitted abuses by physiologists of Germany, France and Italy. In America it has led to the repetition before classes of students of Magendie's extreme cruelties,—demonstrations which havebeen condemned by every leading English physiologist.
V. In view of the dangerous impulses not unfrequently awakened by the sight of pain intentionally inflicted, experiments of this kind should be by legal enactment absolutely forbidden before classes of students, especially in our Public Schools.
VI. It is not in accord with scientific accuracy to contend for unlimited freedom of painful experimentation, on the ground of its vast utility to humanity in the discovery of new methods for the cure of disease. On the contrary, so far as can be discovered by a careful study of English mortality statistics, physiological experiments upon living animals for fifty years back have in no single instance lessened the fatality of any disease below its average of thirty-five years ago.
VII. Vivisection, involving the infliction of pain is, even in its best possible aspect, a necessary evil, and ought at once to be restricted within the narrowest limits, and placed under the supervision of the State.
For reasons sufficiently stated in the preceding pages, the writer does not advocate the total abolition of all experimentation. It is only fair to acknowledge, however, that very strong and weighty arguments in favor of legal repression have been advanced both in this country and abroad, some of which are herewith presented, as the other side of the question.
The cause of abolition has no more earnest and eloquent advocate than Miss Frances Power Cobbe of England. Through innumerable controversies with scientific men in the public journals, magazines and reviews, she has presented in awful array, the abuses of unlimited and uncontrolled experimentation on the continent of Europe, and the arguments in favor of total repression. The following letters, extracts from her public correspondence, will indicate her position.
1, Victoria Street, London, S. W.,January 10, 1881.
Sir.—An Italian pamphlet,Dell'Azione del Dolore sulla Respirazione(The Action of Pain on Respiration), has just reached my hands, and as it is, I think, quite unknown in this country, I will beg you to grant me space for a few extracts from its pages. The pamphlet is by the eminent physiologist, Mantegazza, and was published by Chiusi, of Milan. Having explained the object of his investigations to be the effects of pain on the respiratory organs, the Professor describes (p. 20) the methods he devised for the production of such pain. He found the best to consist in "planting nails, sharp and numerous, through the feet of the animal in such a manner as to render the creature almost motionless, because in every movement it would have felt its torment more acutely" (piantando chiodi acuti e numerosi attraverso le piante dei piedi in modo da rendere immobile o quasi l'animale, perché ad ogni movimento avrebbe sentito molto piu acuto il suo tormento). Further on he mentions that, to produce still more intense pain (dolore intenso) he was obliged to employ lesions, followed by inflammation. An ingenious machine, constructed by "our" Tecnomasio, of Milan, enabled him likewise to grip any part of an animal withpincers with iron teeth, and to crush, or tear, or lift up the victim, "so as to produce pain in every possible way." A drawing of this instrument is appended. The first series of his experiments, Signor Mantegazza informs us, were tried on twelve animals, chiefly rabbits and guinea pigs, of which several were pregnant. One poor little creature, "far advanced in pregnancy," was made to enduredolori atrocissimi, so that it was impossible to make any observations in consequence of its convulsions.
In the second series of experiments twenty-eight animals were sacrificed, some of them taken from nursing their young, exposed to torture for an hour or two, then allowed to rest an hour, and usually replaced in the machine to be crushed or torn by the Professor for periods of from two to six hours more. In the table wherein these experiments are summed up, the termsmolto doloreandcrudeli doloriare delicately distinguished, the latter being apparently reserved for the cases when the victims were, as the Professor expresses it,lardellati di chiodi—("larded with nails").
In conclusion, the author informs us (p. 25) that these experiments were all conducted "con molto amore e pazienza!"—with much zeal and patience.
I am, etc.,Frances Power Cobbe.
In a controversy with Dr. Pye-Smith, who had read a paper before the British Association, Miss Cobbe writes as follows to one of the public journals:
"Dr. Pye-Smith is reported to have said: 'Happily, the neccessary experiments were comparatively few.' Few! What are a "few" experiments? Professor Schiff in ten years experimented on 14,000 dogs, given over to him by the Municipality of Florence, and returned their carcases so mangled that the man who had contracted for their skins found them useless. He also experimented on pigeons, cats, and rabbits to the number, it is calculated, of 70,000 creatures; and he now asks for ten dogs a week in Geneva. All over Germany and France there are laboratories "using" (as the horrible phrase is) numberless animals, inasmuch as I have just received a letter stating that dogs are actually becoming scarce in Lyons, and it is proposed to breed them for the purpose of Vivisection. Be this true or not, I invite any of your readers to visit the office of the Victoria Street Society, and examine the volumes of splendid plates of vivisecting instruments, which will there be shown them, and then judge for themselves whether it be for a few experiments that those elaborate and costly inventions have become a regular branch of manufacture. Let them examine the volume of the English handbook of the physiological laboratory, the volume of Cyon's magnificentatlas, with its 54 plates, theArchives de Physiologie, with its 191 plates, thePhysiologische Methodik, or Claude Bernard'sLeçons sur la Chaleur Animale, with its pictures of the stoves wherein he baked dogs and rabbits alive; and after these sights of disgust and horror they will know how to understand the word "few" in the vocabulary of a physiologist. I am glad to hear that a German opponent of Vivisection recently entering a shop devoted to the sale of these tools of torture, was greeted by the proprietor with a volley of abuse: 'It is you and your friends,' he said, 'who are destroying my trade. I used to sell a hundred of Czermak's tables and other instruments for one I sell now.'
"Dr. Pye-Smith said: 'Many of the experiments inflicted no pain or injury whatever, and the great majority of the rest were rendered painless by the use of those beneficial agents which abolished pain and had themselves been discovered by experiments upon living animals.' As to the use of anæsthetics in annulling the agonies of mutilated animals, the audience ought to have asked Dr. Pye-Smith to explain whether he intended to refer to chloroform, or the narcotic morphia, or, lastly, to the drugcurare. If he referred to chloroform, Dr. Hoggan tells from his own experience (Anæsthetics, p. 1), that 'nothing can be more uncertain than its influence on the lower animals; many of them die before they becomeinsensible. Complete and conscientious anæsthesia is seldom even attempted, the animal getting at most a slight whiff of chloroformby way of satisfying the conscience of the operator, or enabling him to make statements of a humane character.' Even if it were conscientiously administered at the beginning of an experiment, how little would chloroform diminish the misery of Rutherford's dogs or Brunton's ninety cats, whose long-drawn agonies extended over many days? How little could it affect in any way the cases of starving, poisoning, baking, stewing to death, or burning,—like the twenty-five dogs over which Professor Wertheim poured turpentine and then set them on fire, leaving them afterwards slowly to perish? If Dr. Pye-Smith was thinking of morphia, the reader may refer to Claude Bernard'sLeçons de Physiologie Operatoire, where he will find that great physiologists recommends its use; but at the same time mentions (as of no particular consequence) that the animal subjected to its influence still 'suffers pain.' I can hardly suppose, lastly, that Dr. Pye-Smith was secretly thinking ofcurare, and that he is one of those whom Tennyson says would
"Mangle the living dog which loved him and fawned at his knee,Drenched with the hellish oorali."
"Mangle the living dog which loved him and fawned at his knee,Drenched with the hellish oorali."
It is bad enough to "mangle" a loving and intelligent creature without adding to its agonies the paralysis of the powers of motion, and the increasedsensibility to pain occasioned by this horrible drug, which nevertheless Bernard, in the work above quoted, says is in such common use among physiologists, that when an experiment is not otherwise described, it may always be "taken for granted it has been performed on a curarized dog."
Finally, Dr. Pye-Smith says, "It was remarkable that the small residue of experiments in which some amount of pain was necessary were chiefly those in which the direct and immediate benefit to mankind was more obvious. He referred to the trying of drugs on animals, to discovering antidotes to poisons," etc. The bribe here offered to human selfishness is an ingenious one. "Let us," the physiologists say, "retain the right to put animals to torture, for it is very 'remarkable' that when we do so it is always in your interest!" Unluckily for this appeal to the meaner feelings of human nature, which these modern instructors of our young men are not ashamed to put forward, it is difficult for them to hit on any one instance wherein out of their "few" (million) experiments any good to mankind has been, even apparently, achieved. As Claude Bernard honestly said, at least as regards any benefit for suffering humanity, "Nos mains sont vides." As to the trying of drugs on animals, Dr. Pritchard, who is, I believe, the best living authority on the subject, told the Royal Commission (Minutes, 908), "I do not thinkthat the use of drugs on animals can be taken as a guide to the doses or to the action of the same drugs on the human subjects." As to the discovery of antidotes to poison, the only man who seems on the verge of any success is the brave and noble fellow who has been trying such experiments not on animals but on himself.
In conclusion, I must add one word on Dr. Pye-Smith's last sentence, namely, "that legislation against vivisection is injurious to the best interests of the community." Sir, I know not what vivisectors deem to be the best interests of the community. For my part I do not reckon them to be the influence of drugs, nor yet susceptible of being carved out with surgical instruments. I do not think that they consist in escape from physical pain, nor even in the prolongation for a few years of our little earthly life. I hold that the best interests of the community are the moral and immortal interests of every soul in such community, namely, the conquest of selfishness, cowardice, and cruelty, and the development of the god-like sense of justice and love—the growth of the divinest thing in human nature, the faculty of sympathizing with the joys and sorrows of all God's creatures. Believing these to be "the best interests of the community," I ask, without hesitation, for the suppression of this abominable trade, which can best be described as "Pitilessness practised as a profession."If vivisection be indeed the true method of studying physiology, if physiology cannot be advanced except by vivisection, if chemical observation and microscopic research be useless for the purpose, and nothing but the torture of animals and the demoralization of men will suffice for its progress—then, in God's name, I say, let physiology stop at the point it has reached, even till the day of doom.—I am, Sir, with apologies for the length of this letter, yours, etc.
Frances Power Cobbe
Certainly, as regards the ethics of vivisection, nothing more eloquent has ever been written than this closing paragraph.
In a letter to the LondonTimesin December, 1884, Miss Cobbe writes as follows:
Sir,—In your article on this subject on Saturday last you called upon the opponents of vivisection to answer certain questions. As I have been intrusted for many years with the hon. secretaryship of the leading anti-vivisectionist society, I beg to offer you the following replies to those questions:—
You ask first, Do we "deny that vivisection is capable of yielding knowledge of service to man?" We are not so rash as to deny that any practice, even the most immoral conceivable, might possibly yieldknowledge of service to man; and, in particular, we do not deny that the vivisection of human beings by the surgeons of classic times, and again by the great anatomists of Italy in the 15th century, may very possibly have yielded knowledge to man, and be capable, if revived, of yielding still more. We have, however, for a long time back called on the advocates of the vivisection of dogs, monkeys, &c., to furnish evidence of the beneficial results of their work, not as setting at rest the question of its morality, but as an indispensable preliminary to justify them in coming into the court of public opinion as defendants of a practice obviously (as the Royal Commissioners reported) "liable from its very nature to great abuse."
We must be excused if we now hold it to be demonstrated that, whether vivisection be or be not "capable of yielding useful knowledge," it certainly yields only a scanty crop of it. Were there anything like an abundant harvest, such a sample as this would not have been produced with so much pomp for public scrutiny. In short, we think with Dr. Leffingwell that, "if pain could be measured by money, there is no mining company in the world which would sanction prospecting in such barren regions."
You ask us, Sir, secondly, "Do we affirm that the benefit of mankind is not an adequate or sufficient justification for the infliction of pain on animals?" We have two answers to this question.
Assuming that by vivisection benefits might be obtained for human bodies, we hold that the evil results of the practice on human minds would more than counterbalance any such benefits. The cowardice and pitilessness involved in tying down a dog on a table and slowly mangling its brain, its eyes, its entrails; the sin committed against love and fidelity themselves when a creature capable of dying of grief on his master's grave is dealt with as a mere parcel of material tissues, "valuable for purposes of research"—these are basenesses for which no physical advantages would compensate, and the prevalence of such a heart-hardening process among our young men would, we are convinced, detract more from the moral interests of our nation than a thousand cases of recovery from disease would serve those of a lower kind. Even life itself ought not to be saved by such methods, any more than by the cannibalism of the men of the "Mignonette."
Our second answer is yet more brief. We do not "deny that the benefit of man is a sufficient justification for inflicting pain upon animals," provided that pain is kept within moderate bounds, nor yet to taking life from them in a quick and careful manner. But we do deny the right of man to inflict torture upon brutes, and thus convert their lives from a blessing into a curse. Such torture has been inflicted upon tens of thousands of animals by vivisection; and nolegislation that ingenuity can devise will, we believe, suffice to guard against the repetition of it so long as it is sanctioned in any way as a method of research. The use of vivisection—if it have any use—is practically inseparable from abuse. We therefore call upon our countrymen to forego the poor bribes of possible use which are offered to them, and of which we have now seen a "unique and impressive" example, and generously and manfully to say of vivisection as they once said of slavery "We will have none of it."
I am, Sir, yours, etc.,Frances Power Cobbe.
Hengwrt, Dolgelly, Dec. 28, 1884.
"There remain two grounds to adopt: one the total abolition of all experiments; the other the total abolition of allpainfulexperiments. This latter position, which is the one that Dr. Bigelow of Boston and Dr. Leffingwell have assumed, has engaged our attention for a long time; but, after bestowing upon it careful consideration, we feel that we must give it up as impracticable. To secure immunity from pain there must be absolutely perfect anæsthesia. This can be only obtained in two ways: one is by trusting to the experimenter himself to give sufficient of the anæsthetic; the other to insist that an assistant shall be present for the express purpose of keeping the animal under perfect anæsthesia. Now is it anyway likely that either of these conditions would be observed?"
"Vivisection is grossly abused in the United States. * * We would add our condemnation of the ruthless barbarity which is every winter perpetratedin the Medical Schools of this country. History records some frightful atrocities perpetrated in the name of Religion; but it has remained for the enlightenment and humaneness of this century to stultify themselves by tolerating the abuses of the average physiological laboratory—all conducted in the name of Science. There is only one way to progress in Therapeutics; and that is by clinical observation; the noting of the action of individual drugs under particular diseased conditions. He who has the largest practice and is the keenest observer, and the most systematic recorder of what he sees, does the most to advance Medicine."
"A memorial for the absolute abolition of vivisection has been presented to Mr. Gladstone with a great many most influential signatures attached. For our own part, were the experiments on the inoculation of animal diseases excepted,—experiments which, we venture to say, have sometimes proved of the greatest value to animals themselves,—we should, on the whole, be content to go with the abolitionists, not because we think all experiments, especially when conducted under strict anæsthetics, wrong, but because when they are permitted at all it is so extremelydifficult to enforce properly and fully humane conditions. Dr. A. Leffingwell has sufficiently shown in the able paper in the JulyScribner's Magazine, how extremely few remedies of value have resulted from this awfully costly expenditure of anguish. 'If pain could be estimated in money' he justly says, 'no corporation would be satisfied with such a waste of capital.' Take, as the single illustration of this most weighty sentence, Dr. Leffingwell's statement that what the late Dr. Sharpey called 'Magendie's infamous experiment' on the stomach of the dog, has been repeated 200 times without establishing to the satisfaction of scientific physiologists the theory for which that act of wickedness was first committed. No wonder the society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection goes to extremes."