Part 2 (1/2)
[A] The contradictory opinions ascribed to most of the authorities quoted in this article are taken directly from the ”Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes,”--a Blue-Book Parliamentary Report.
Dr. Carpenter would doubtless repeat his opinion that ”frogs have extremely little perception of pain;” and in the evidence of that experienced physiologist George Henry Lewes, he would find the cheerful a.s.surance, ”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 anaesthetics 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 physiologists in 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 mere exposition 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. On the 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 anaesthetizing 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 no impediment to successful demonstration, Is opium an anaesthetic? 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._”[A] 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[B] all agree that sensation is _not_ abolished; on the other hand, Rutherford regards curare as a partial anaesthetic, and Huxley strongly intimates that Bernard in thus deciding from experiments that it does not affect the cerebral hemispheres or consciousness, ”_jumped at a conclusion_ for 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”?
[A] ”He feels the pain, but has lost, so to speak, the idea of self defense.” Lecons de Physiologie operatoire, 1879, p.
115.
[B] Text-Book of Human Physiology, p. 595.
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 invariably rouses 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? n.o.body 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 inst.i.tution, 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 cla.s.sroom; for the Academie des Sciences decided that there was ”no occasion to take any notice 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 compa.s.sion and of sympathy with suffering is more generally diffused among all cla.s.ses of Great Britain than elsewhere in Europe; and one cannot help wondering what our place might be, were it possible to inst.i.tute 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 excruciating that 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 anaesthetics: 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 cla.s.s demonstration of this kind by Magendie, before the introduction of ether, that the circ.u.mstance 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 bare to 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 repet.i.tion of this experiment solely as a cla.s.s 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 his belief 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 not_ show an experiment upon a dog or rabbit before students, when the animal is not anaesthetized.” Dr. Pavy, of Guy's Hospital, a.s.serts that a painful experiment introduced before a cla.s.s ”would not be tolerated for a moment.” Sir William Gull, M. D., believes that the repet.i.tion 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 utmost emphasis, 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 pa.s.ses 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 them _dare not_ exhibit 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 very satisfactorily that the posterior roots (of the spinal cord) were exclusively sensory, and this fact has been confirmed by more recent observations upon the higher cla.s.ses of animals. We have ourselves frequently exposed and irritated the roots of the nerves in dogs, _in public demonstrations_ in experiments on the recurrent sensibility, ... and in another series of observations.”[A]
[A] ”A Text-Book of Human Physiology.” By Austin Flint, Jr.
M. D. New York, 1876. Page 589; see also page 674.