(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SCOTSMAN.")
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,
perche 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 with
pincers 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 endure _dolori
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 terms _molto dolore_ and _crudeli
dolori_ are 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 magnificent atlas, with its 54 plates, the _Archives
de Physiologie_, with its 191 plates, the _Physiologische Methodik_,
or Claude Bernard's _Lecons 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 anaesthetics 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 drug _curare_. If he referred to
chloroform, Dr. Hoggan tells from his own experience (_Anaesthetics_,
p. 1), that 'nothing can be more uncertain than its influence on
the lower animals; many of them die before they become insensible.
Complete and conscientious anaesthesia is seldom even attempted,
the animal getting at most a slight whiff of chloroform _by 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's
_Lecons 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 of _curare_, 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."
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
increased sensibility 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 think that 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.