Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
Libraries.)
THE PROS AND CONS OF VIVISECTION
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration: "LA MORT."
_By Bartholome in Pere Lachaise, Paris._
_Frontispiece._]
THE PROS AND CONS OF VIVISECTION
BY
DR CHARLES RICHET
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN THE FACULTY OF MEDICINE
PARIS
WITH A PREFACE BY
W. D. HALLIBURTON, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1908
PREFACE
To scientific readers, Professor Charles Richet needs no introduction, but
to the public at large it may be necessary to mention that he is one of the
best known of French physiologists. He has occupied for a good many years
the Chair of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and he has
contributed greatly to the progress of the science to which he has devoted
his life; some of his discoveries are alluded to with all modesty in the
pages which follow. He is, moreover, a man of great erudition, and has been
wisely selected to be the editor of a monumental work, _Le dictionnaire de
physiologie_, which is issuing from the press to-day.
Professor Richet has given particular attention to the study of the
psychological side of physiology, and his views on pain will be read as
coming from one who is specially fitted to deal with this and other mental
phenomena.
I therefore consider it a great honour that Professor Richet should have
asked me to write a preface to his most interesting and convincing book on
the Pros and Cons of Vivisection, and it is a great pleasure to me to
commend its thoughtful perusal to all who are interested in the subject.
Professor Richet is not only one who speaks with authority, but he is one
of the gentlest and kindliest of men. The science which he teaches is the
science of life. To understand the meaning of vital processes it is
necessary to study the living organism, and to obtain this knowledge it is
sometimes necessary to perform experiments on living animals. When he
defends a practice which many regard as cruel, detestable, and immoral,
mainly because of the unscrupulous misrepresentations put forward by the
professional Anti-vivisectionists, he does so because he is convinced that
none of the epithets just mentioned correctly describe the experiments
which are carried out in physiological laboratories at the present time.
These experiments are undertaken only by properly qualified persons having
a due sense of their responsibilities. Every regard is paid to the comfort
of the animals employed; and the ultimate aim of this work is the progress
of knowledge, and the consequent relief to suffering which is so often only
the result of ignorance. The benefits which accrue are felt not only by
human beings, but also (as in veterinary practice) by the animals
themselves. No attempt is made here to defend experiments which have not
these objects in view, or which (as has happened in the past) pay no
consideration to the pain an animal experiences.
I feel quite sure that if the British public were convinced that the
experiments in our laboratories were all conducted in accordance with our
present law, the Anti-vivisection crusade would flicker out. It is the
object of those who are active propagandists on the other side to keep
their agitation going, by omitting to mention the painlessness of the
operations performed, or by suggesting (either directly or by innuendo)
that anaesthesia is a sham. My own experience, which is a wide one, has been
that physiologists not only obey the law literally, but are most
punctilious in its due observance. A certain number of trivial
irregularities have been reported to the Home Office by the inspectors
appointed under the Vivisection Act, but there has been no case of omitting
the use of anaesthetics. The majority of these offences have been for using
anaesthetics unnecessarily. A certificate in certain cases is granted for
the omission of an anaesthetic: this is given when the operation is a
trifling one, and has never been granted for any operation more serious
than the prick of a hypodermic needle. Nevertheless, the operator has
sometimes employed an anaesthetic even for this, and has in consequence been
reported to the Home Office for infringing the terms of his certificate.
Pawloff has truly said that the ideal experiment is one performed without
anaesthesia and without pain. In many cases this ideal can be realised, but
in other cases it is unattainable. Physiologists have, therefore, had to
select which of the two disturbing factors shall be absent, and they have
unhesitatingly chosen the latter. Pain must be absent (1) on grounds of
humanity, (2) because it is a far greater disturber of the normal functions
than anaesthesia is, and (3) because the struggles of an animal in pain will
nullify the accuracy of the experiment, and endanger the safety of the
delicate apparatus which it may be necessary to employ.
Exactly the same arguments apply to the employment of the antiseptic or
aseptic methods of surgery, in experiments in which the animal is kept
alive after an operation to study its effects. The healing process is then
painless, and there is absence of those febrile and inflammatory conditions
which would otherwise complicate the issue.
It is therefore for two reasons that an experimenter uses both anaesthetics
and antiseptics, (1) to save the animal suffering, and (2) to ensure the
success of the experiment.
The barbarities which are recorded by Anti-vivisectionist agitators do not
exist; the repetition of their stories in spite of repeated contradictions
is partly due to wilful misrepresentation and exaggeration, and partly the
result of ignorance of the meaning of the technical terms employed by
physiological writers.
At the Royal Commission which is now considering the question of
Vivisection, the cases of alleged cruelty have been one by one sifted to
the bottom, and in no single case has a charge of cruelty been sustained.
Any one who cares to wade through the four bluebooks of evidence which have
been printed will discover for himself that this is so. In fact, one
prominent Anti-vivisection journal (the _Verulam Review_, April-June 1907,
p. 186), in reference to the evidence given by one of the witnesses before
the Commission, had to confess, "Almost every one of Mrs Cook's horrifying
cases seems, when examined, to melt away."
An Anti-vivisectionist publication which has obtained some notoriety ("The
Shambles of Science") figured in a recent lawsuit. When the particular
charge which was the subject of the action was investigated by a prolonged
inquiry before the Lord Chief-Justice, a British jury showed their sense of
the enormity of the slander by awarding the physiologist impugned the very
substantial damages of L2000. An undertaking was subsequently given by the
publisher of this "hysterical work" (to quote the words of the Lord
Chief-Justice) that it should be withdrawn from publication. Yet the book
has been since re-issued by the authors, with the chapter that formed the
subject of the trial omitted, but otherwise with very little alteration.
The libellous statements scattered through its other chapters can still be
read by the lovers of sensation, and the authors doubtless hope that their
readers will never take the trouble to read also the evidence before the
Royal Commission in which all the allegations of cruelty have been shown to
be groundless.
The subject of curare, another bugbear of the Anti-vivisection lecturer, is
so adequately dealt with by Professor Richet that I will spare the reader
any further discussion on that question here. I have taken the liberty of
adding, in a footnote on p. 36, a statement in respect to the usages of
English physiologists in relation to that drug.
The experiments of the pharmacologist in the investigation of the action of
drugs can be and are carried out under anaesthesia in the same way as those
of the physiologist. But the experiments of the pathologist, which consist
in conveying germs and other disease products to animals, come under a
different heading. One does not deny that if the animal takes the disease,
suffering is produced. This is fully admitted by Professor Richet, and I
think that any common-sense reader will be convinced by the arguments put
forward that the practice is fully justifiable. It is difficult, as
Professor Richet points out, to gauge the amount of pain an animal such as
a rat, guinea-pig, or rabbit (the animals usually employed for the purpose)
really feels when given a disease experimentally, and whether this is
greater or less than the suffering it will endure when another disease or a
violent death carries it off in the usual course of nature. It is, however,
undeniable that the suffering of these animals is much less than those of
human beings. A man, when he is ill, suffers a certain amount of discomfort
and physical bodily pain; but this is a drop in the ocean compared to the
mental worry and anxiety he endures--all that, at any rate, is absent from
the suffering rabbit. The pathologist sees beyond the pain which he
inflicts to the pain which he prevents. The death of a few lower animals
may be, and has in the past been the means of preventing pain and disease
both to the animals themselves and to human beings also, who may be counted
by thousands or even millions.
If there is one piece of evidence more than another which was given before
the Royal Commission that deserves rescue from the oblivion of a bluebook,
it is that given by Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton. His is one of the
keenest legal intellects of modern times, and he at any rate cannot be
accused of having any axe of his own to grind. I regret that exigencies of
space prevent me from making more than one or two references to it.
He begins by taking the case of a ship infected with plague, and infested
also with rats, the carriers of plague. The ship enters port. Would it be
preferable to kill the rats, and so prevent them and the disease from
entering the port and causing untold disaster there, or staying one's hand
because the slaughter of the rats would be a painful proceeding? The
captain who gives orders for the destruction of the rats inflicts pain and
death on them in order to prevent greater pain and more widespread death
elsewhere. The captain who says, "Spare the rats," is guilty of the
criminal act of causing the death of many innocent human beings. So it is
with the Anti-vivisectionists: they see only the pain inflicted, and do not
heed the pain prevented. On this score they are in a sense logical when
they call Lord Lister a brute, although he of all men living at the present
time has been the means of preventing the greatest amount of suffering.
They see only the pain which he deliberately inflicted on a few rats and
rabbits; they cannot see, or refuse to see the measureless amount of misery
he has prevented.
In another place the Lord Justice points out that the pain inflicted in all
the laboratories of the country put together during a year is infinitesimal
compared to that which is inflicted every day in the slaughter of animals
for food; to that which ignorant farm labourers inflict without
anaesthetics, in spaying animals by thousands in order that beef and mutton
may be tenderer or have a more pleasant flavour to the consumer; to that
inflicted by sportsmen when their victims, imperfectly shot, die a
lingering death; to that which women thoughtlessly allow in order that they
may have ospreys in their hats and furs upon their backs.
So far as the satisfaction of appetite, the pandering to the so-called
sportsman's instincts, or the gratification of vanity are concerned, these
things may go on. The average Anti-vivisectionist disregards them, or at
least makes no effort to prevent them. The only kind of pain which stirs
his feelings, and meets with his opprobrium, and enables him to indulge in
his favourite epithets, is _the one justifiable bit of pain in the whole
world_--a pain inflicted with the noblest of all objects, and by the most
humane of all men (for so the medical profession admittedly is), the
object, namely, of preventing future pain, which otherwise would encompass
the world of life.
Professor Richet has wisely not made his book too long. He has been content
to select a few typical and striking examples of the benefits which
experimentation on animals has conferred upon humanity, instead of
attempting even to enumerate them all. He might for instance have dwelt
upon the extinction of rinderpest in South Africa: here, at the expense of
a few experimental animals, Koch has prevented a scourge which formerly
exterminated hundreds of thousands of cattle annually, and might still be
exercising this fell influence on to all eternity if the opponents of
scientific knowledge had their way. He might have taken the case of snake
bite, and the discovery made by his great fellow-countryman Calmette of the
means of combating this deadly poison, which has hitherto killed our Indian
fellow-subjects by its tens of thousands a year.
On coming to one of the most recent of beneficent discoveries, he might
have dwelt upon the case of Mediterranean fever, and the way which it has
been practically stamped out at Malta and Gibraltar, because the method of
its spread has been discovered and the disease prevented at the expense of
a few goats and other animals.
But those who are wilfully deaf to such arguments will not, I fear, be
convinced, even if examples are multiplied indefinitely. In spite of the
love for animals which our opponents profess, the life of cattle,
particularly if they are so far away as South Africa, does not appeal to
them. The happiness of the teeming millions of India does not come home to
them. Even the comfort of our brave soldiers and sailors in the
Mediterranean stations is of little account: they have never visited the
hospitals at Malta or Gibraltar, and seen, as they could have seen a year
or two ago, the poor fellows dying off like flies from a mysterious disease
that nothing could be done for, because the manner in which the fatal germ
entered their bodies was unknown. Now, by the simple prohibition of the use
of goat's milk, a prohibition due to animal experimentation and to that
alone, the disease has been exterminated.
Anti-vivisectionists do not come in contact with disease all day and every
day as medical men do; they therefore do not realise how widespread it is,
and what terrible forms it may take. Their notions are vague; they talk
about suffering without any intimate knowledge of the question. They bestow
their sympathies upon the few victims of the vivisector's knife or syringe;
they have none left for the larger number of victims which would have
suffered if the few had not been sacrificed. Can it be wondered at that
medical men, whose experience is so different to theirs, feel otherwise?
The doctor's life is not one in which these are just a few painful partings
with dear ones, but he is steeped in such experiences from morning till
night. His sympathies aim at the relief and cure of all this evil; and the
death of a few guinea-pigs or rabbits is a necessary incident which he has
the courage to permit because of the greater good that is the ultimate
result.
There are, however, some of the examples which ought to stir better
feelings even in the Anti-vivisectionist camp, namely, cases of diseases
which are common or used to be common in our very midst, and which we need
not go to India or Malta to look for. One of these is diphtheria, and the
statements and statistics in relation to the almost miraculous change which
has come over our ideas on this affection are incontrovertible, and are
fully set forth in the following pages. The disease no longer inspires the
terror it used to do, for it is one which can be cured, and easily cured,
by the method of serum therapy. It has not, it is true, been stamped out,
for up till the present success has not attended efforts of prevention.
Prevention is better than cure, but cure is better than suffering and
death. Just now, medical science can cure the disease, and if medical
progress continues at its present rapid rate of growth, who can doubt that
in the near future this disease, like typhus and typhoid, will be stamped
out?
Typhoid fever is an example of a disease which has only died out in this
country quite recently. When I was a student the hospital wards were full
of it; but to-day most medical students in London pass through their entire
curriculum of five years or more without ever seeing a case. What has been
accomplished for London can also be carried out in other large cities, and
the extinction of the disease is entirely due to improved sanitary
measures, and the destruction of the bacillus which causes the malady. We
often quite legitimately complain of the extravagances of our Government
departments and our County Councils, and of their apathy in questions
affecting the health of the country. We are still awaiting, for instance,
proper legislative measures to ensure the purity of milk. But this at least
we can thank them for--proper methods of disinfection and a purer
water-supply have led to the almost complete extinction of what was a
common and painful and fatal disease. But how does Vivisection come in
here? County councillors are not Vivisectors. No, they are not, but their
action is the undoubted result of public opinion; and that healthy public
opinion is the outcome of medical opinion, which was preached to deaf ears
for many years, and at last succeeded in impressing itself upon the public
at large; and this medical knowledge was the offspring of the only certain
guide in such matters, pathological experiment. It was not until the germ
of typhoid fever was recognised and isolated, not until the conditions of
its growth and the means of its destruction were experimentally verified
upon the lower animals, that any sound knowledge was obtained. Bacteriology
is at the bottom of hygiene; it is by hygienic precautions that certain
diseases are prevented; and the basis of bacteriology is experiment on
animals.
I will allow myself only one more point, and that relates to the general
question of serum therapy. Some people object to the whole conception of
serum treatment, on the ground that serum and allied substances are 'messy'
things. It was by this very expressive phrase that Lord Justice Fletcher
Moulton summarised and paraphrased the Anti-vivisectionist attitude on the
serum method of treatment. Miss Lind af Hageby on one occasion
characterised it as 'medieval,' a word which is quite meaningless in this
connection, but prettier, I admit, than "Behring's filth product," which is
the elegant name coined for antidiphtheritic serum by one of her friends.
Filth or dirt has been well defined as matter in the wrong place. Blood on
a carpet, for example, is certainly messy and dirty; it ought not to be
there. But blood or serum (the fluid part of the blood) in the heart, or in
the arteries and veins, is in its rightful place, and it does its duty of
nutrition and so forth when it comes into more immediate contact with the
tissues in the small tubes we call the capillaries. One of these duties is
to exert a protective influence upon the whole body, by destroying the
germs of disease which get in, despite all precautions. We are all of us
exposed, so long as spitting in public places is not prohibited, to the
germs of consumption, but we do not all die of that disease. This is
because the white corpuscles of our blood are in good trim, and able
successfully to devour the bacteria that enter our interior. It is those
people who are run down, and in whom the white corpuscles are 'below par,'
that catch the disease. In assisting the white corpuscles to perform this
important function, the co-operation of certain substances dissolved in the
fluid portion of the blood is also necessary. The most recently discovered
of these auxiliary substances are called _opsonins_. The word opsonin is
derived from a Greek root which means "to prepare the feast." The opsonin
either adds something to the bacterium which makes it tasty to the white
corpuscle, or removes (or neutralises) something which previously made it
distasteful. White corpuscles will not as a rule ingest and devour bacteria
from a pure culture, but they do so eagerly immediately the bacteria are
bathed in serum; and the serum which is most efficacious in acting as a
sort of sauce is that which has been obtained from an animal which has been
previously infected with the same kind of bacteria, and which has recovered
from the ailment such bacteria have set up.
This is not mere fancy: the whole sequence of events can be easily followed
on a glass slide kept at body temperature and examined with a microscope.
It is well known that if the yeast plant (which is very similar in many
details to bacteria) is grown in a solution of sugar, the sugar is broken
up and disappears, and two new substances formed from the sugar take its
place. These are alcohol and carbonic acid gas. If bacteria grow in the
blood, they do not produce alcohol, but they do produce other poisons in a
way analogous to that by which yeast produces alcohol. These poisons are
called _toxins_. There are substances in the fluid part of the blood which
are called antitoxins, because they neutralise the toxins produced by the
bacteria. Their presence constitutes a means of defence against the harmful
effects the toxins would otherwise produce. The marvellous part of the
defence is that, although we all have a certain amount of antitoxin in our
blood, the amount increases in proportion to the amount of toxin. It is a
familiar fact that rough manual labour increases the hardness of the hands;
friction stimulates the epidermis or outer skin, so that it grows in
thickness. The body affords numerous similar instances of how it is capable
of rising to the occasion and increasing its defences. Just in the same
way, the presence of a toxin stimulates the living cells to produce more
and more antitoxin, and the blood remains rich in the antitoxin for a
considerable time afterwards. This explains why a person who has had an
infectious disease does not take it readily a second time; he is immune for
a certain number of years, because his blood is so rich in the antidote.
Now, the principle of serum treatment depends on those ascertained and
definitely proved facts. In the modern treatment of tuberculosis, for
example, the aim of the physician is to increase nature's method of cure:
good food and pure air do much to increase the healthiness of the blood and
fortify its natural power, of destroying the germs; sometimes this alone
suffices. At other times it is not sufficient, particularly if the disease
has advanced and the number of bacteria is too great for the enfeebled
white corpuscles to deal with. Then the physician goes a step farther, and
administers the appropriate opsonin by injecting it under the skin, again
simply increasing the resistance of his patient by a perfectly natural
method.
In the case of diphtheria, the antitoxin appears to be more efficacious
than an opsonin. A horse is inoculated with diphtheria, and when he has
recovered, his blood is collected. This blood is then rich in antitoxin,
the natural antidote that has enabled the horse to get well again. The
blood is allowed to clot, and the clot is removed; the fluid residue is
called serum, and the serum contains the antidote. If now another horse has
diphtheria, and you want to cure him quickly, what more natural than inject
the serum of the horse who has just recovered? it will save the second
horse the trouble and the time of making the antitoxin for himself, and it
has been proved over and over again that the second horse does recover with
amazing celerity.
The pathologists then advanced a step, and asked, Why should this antidote
be used solely for animals when they have diphtheria? Why should not the
horse's serum be beneficial to human beings when they are attacked with the
same disease? The diphtheria poison is much more harmful to a man, and
kills him more quickly than it does a horse; it is therefore imperative to
use the antidote early. The crucial experiment was made; entire success
followed it, and now, as Professor Richet says, it is the only treatment
employed, and any medical man who refuses to use it is little short of a
criminal.
I have entered into this brief and, I trust, simple explanation of serum
treatment, because so many people want to understand it and are unable to
comprehend the technical terms which scientific men, writing for scientific
readers, almost exclusively employ. I am even hopeful that some of the more
reasonable opponents of animal experimentation may be convinced that by
carrying out the new methods of serum therapy, we are not going against
nature but helping her. It is just these 'messy things' that nature uses
for curing infectious diseases, and the introduction of an opsonin or an
antitoxin is not putting matter in its wrong place, but in its right place;
and therefore the use of the terms filth and dirt in this relationship
should be confined either to the foul-mouthed or to the ignorant.
W. D. HALLIBURTON.
_July 1908._
P.S.--The proof sheets of Professor Richet's book have passed through my
hands during their issue from the press. Beyond a few verbal amendments,
and a footnote here and there which I have added and initialled, no
alterations have been made in the original.
I am also responsible for the insertion of Appendix C, regarding the aims
and objects of the Research Defence Society. These additions and minor
alterations have all met with Professor Richet's approval.
I may mention that the book has not yet been published in French, and is
presented to the public for the first time in English dress. The English
lady who collaborated with Professor Richet in its production has worked
with and studied under him for some years, and it was largely owing to her
persuasion that he consented to express his views publicly. She desires for
the present to remain anonymous.
W. D. H.
_October 1908._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE BY PROFESSOR HALLIBURTON v
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I
THE NECESSARY LIMITS OF VIVISECTION 7
CHAPTER II
PAIN AND DEATH 18
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING ANAESTHESIA IN VIVISECTION 31
CHAPTER IV
CONCERNING EXPERIMENTATION OTHER THAN VIVISECTION 40
CHAPTER V
SERVICES RENDERED TO SCIENCE AND HUMANITY BY EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY 59
CHAPTER VI
MORALITY AND VIVISECTION 72
CHAPTER VII
ARE LAWS REGULATING VIVISECTION NECESSARY? 91
CHAPTER VIII
VIVISECTION AND THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE 97
POST SCRIPTUM 114
APPENDIX A.--DIPHTHERIA STATISTICS 121
APPENDIX B.--BIBLIOGRAPHY 124
APPENDIX C.--THE RESEARCH DEFENCE SOCIETY 130
ILLUSTRATIONS
"LA MORT." By BARTHOLOME, in Pere Lachaise, Paris, _Frontispiece_
PASTEUR IN HIS LABORATORY, _facing page_ 44
"L'ENFANT." In Musee du Luxembourg, Paris, " 53
INTRODUCTION
The object of this book is to set forth, as impartially as possible, the
reasons which militate for and against vivisection. It is, however, a
physiologist who is speaking, therefore no one will be surprised that he
should defend a practice which is at the basis of the science he teaches.
May he be permitted, at the same time, to express the high moral esteem
which he feels for all those who, nobly enamoured of a very high ideal,
deny to men the right of inflicting suffering, or even death, upon animals?
There is not a more generous thought than this. Without doubt it is our
duty to have sympathy for, and to abstain from indifference and cruelty in
our dealings with all living creatures: might does not constitute right.
Man is stronger than the animal; but this superiority of power, this might,
does not constitute a right to act contrary to moral obligation.
Morality does not consist solely of duties towards human beings; it is more
general: it extends to every being capable of suffering. The physiologist
is not an ignoramus, neither is he a barbarian; and he has right well
understood this duty. Physiologists have concluded that experimentation
upon living animals is necessary, and it is the many reasons which have led
them to this opinion which I propose to set forth. But it will, I hope, be
quite understood that my defence of vivisection implies no contempt, no
raillery, no unfriendly sentiment towards those who oppose it. My opponents
are not always courteous or loyal in their polemics; but that is of no
importance; and I shall reply only to such objections as are potent, able,
and rational. In other words, I shall take from among the arguments of
anti-vivisectionists those only which can be called legitimate, those which
deserve to be studied methodically and profoundly by every man of good
faith. I shall deliberately put on one side both abuse and nonsense.
I should here mention an anonymous leaflet which has received a
considerable amount of publicity in England ("How Scientific Cruelty is
defended," London, 1907, 4 pp.). In this leaflet, a reply is given to an
article which I once published on Vivisection. Certainly, after a lapse of
twenty-six years, I might claim the right to abjure some of the notions of
my youth. Taken as a whole, however, my ideas concerning vivisection have
changed but little, and I still consider it to be necessary. I of course
recognise that the number of physiological laboratories, which I estimated
at thirty in my article, is for present-day purposes too low. During the
last twenty-six years their number has very considerably increased. But a
laboratory of physiology does not necessarily mean a laboratory of
vivisection. There is the whole range of physiological chemistry, the study
of ferments and psychological physiology, not one of which makes any
demands on vivisection. Many eminent physiologists--for example, my former
master, M. Marey--have performed very little vivisection. Even in those
laboratories where vivisection is performed, it is not practised every day,
and especially not upon dogs! Far from it! In Paris, for example, where
every dog experimented upon is a stray animal handed over by the
prefecture of police, there are only about six hundred dogs per annum thus
available for experimentation. Now the laboratories in Paris represent,
from the point of view of activity, at least half of all the laboratories
in France put together.
It is alleged that Schiff stated to Mrs Anna Kingsford that he had
experimented on more than 14,000 dogs, that is to say, an average of one
dog a day for fifty years! This is obviously an exaggeration, though it is
difficult to trace now who was responsible for it.
Finally, the remaining objections of the anonymous author in question
amount only to this: The author believes that physiologists work for money
and renown, and not at all for the sake of humanity (!!). Also, that young
men are made cruel by the sight of cruel experiments. But the author simply
forgets this fact, that there is not at this present moment one single
_honourable_ physiologist who would consent to perform long and distressing
experiments on an animal not under anaesthetics. I hold no brief for those
who do otherwise, and I disapprove energetically of the use of _curare_.
The conclusions of my anonymous critic therefore fall to the ground.
I confess I do not understand the statement that experimentation on rabbits
and other animals is of no use to humanity; and my critic unfortunately
from his point of view has selected Claude Bernard's experiments as an
example of uselessness. Does he not know that Claude Bernard discovered the
presence of sugar in the blood, of glycogen in the liver, of diabetes
produced through nervous action, of the action of oxygen and of carbonic
oxide on the red blood corpuscles, the action of the pancreatic juice on
fat, the part played by the pneumogastric nerve in the innervation of the
heart? These discoveries not only rejuvenated physiology, but exercise a
permanent influence over the whole of medicine, and over the entire realm
of therapeutics! I refuse to accept the antiquated conception of an
empirical medicine which does not aim at discovering the truth; which
thinks solely of clumsy practical application; and which regards as useful
only that which leads immediately and directly to the cure of a given
illness. All truth is useful; all ignorance is baneful; and the sole limit
to man's power lies in the extent of his knowledge. We must forego
discussion with those who cannot understand this fundamental notion.
CHAPTER I
THE NECESSARY LIMITS OF VIVISECTION
First of all I declare, without fear of being contradicted by any
physiologist, that the past has witnessed much excess, almost guilty
excess, and that at the present time excess might still be pointed out. I
quite believe that, even to-day, here and there in the laboratories of
physiology, young men may be found who are no doubt enamoured of science,
but who have not sufficiently reflected on the nature of pain, and
consequently, through lack of sympathy, are callous and indifferent about
inflicting useless, or almost useless, tortures on innocent animals. On
this point I might mention numerous facts which are extremely painful to
relate, but which nevertheless we must have the courage to acknowledge and
denounce.
To quote only one instance, a most abominable one, I will mention the
following, which is old, dating back about forty years. In the veterinary
schools, surgical studies, at that time, were not made on the dead carcase,
but on the living animal; so that the wretched victim, generally a horse,
served as a subject, while yet alive, for all the operations which the
veterinary surgeon is called upon to perform. The detestable argument given
at that time to qualify this barbarism was that the veterinary surgeon
should be familiar with the reactions of a living animal, and that, as a
guarantee of being able to perform an operation on a diseased horse, he
should have already practised the same operation several times, not on the
dead body, but on a horse full of life and vigour, able to defend himself,
and obliged therefore to be held down motionless by special processes. But
this is scarcely a sufficient justification. But happily such things no
longer exist; public opinion, stimulated no doubt by the writings of
anti-vivisectionists, has altered the customs of veterinary
experimentalists so well that in no veterinary school to-day are surgical
exercises now performed on other than the dead body.
Thus, as far as surgery is concerned, unquestionably all vivisection
should rigorously be proscribed. I will discuss later the point as to
whether this interdiction should be moral--that is, recommended as a
precept of humanity, or enforced by law under penalty of imprisonment or
fine. For the moment it will suffice to establish the point that no living
animal should serve for surgical exercises.
I will go even further, and on this point my opinion will perhaps clash
with that of some of my friends and colleagues: I maintain that no
experimental physiological demonstrations which involve suffering should
ever be performed. Much abuse has taken place in experimentation for
instruction, which is a very different thing from experimentation for
investigation. Important as it may be to demonstrate physiological facts to
students, I do not consider that this importance is greater than the
suffering of an animal. And here again I will take an example, that of the
distinction between the motor nerves and the sensory nerves.
Magendie, in 1811, following up an idea somewhat hesitatingly put forth by
Charles Bell a few years previously, demonstrated that the anterior nerve
roots, starting from the spinal cord, give movement to the muscles, whilst
the posterior roots are exclusively devoted to sensibility; so that there
are anterior motor nerves and posterior sensory nerves. In order to
demonstrate this, it is evidently necessary to operate on a living and
sensitive animal.
The discovery was confirmed by several physiologists between 1830 and 1850;
and I do not think we have the right to repeat this cruel experiment for
the sake of the instruction of students. It is not only cruel, but also
useless, for it consists in laying bare the anterior and posterior
nerve-fibres of the spinal cord, with the sole object of allowing students
to see that the excitation of the anterior nerve-fibres provokes movement
and not pain, whilst the excitation of posterior nerve-fibres provokes pain
and not movement. Now, in order to make students clearly understand this
distinction between the motor and sensory nerves, I require only a
blackboard and a piece of chalk; and I claim that, with a piece of chalk
and a blackboard, I am able to explain very clearly all the details of this
phenomenon. Not only does the chalk suffice for comprehension as well as
vivisection, but it is better; because the experiment is so delicate, so
difficult, and, in order to be understood, it must be observed so narrowly,
so closely, that out of the whole class scarcely two or three students are
able to follow the experiment. The rest of the class have before them only
the frightful spectacle of the reactions of a mutilated, suffering animal
under excitations which are made in the very depths of a wound on organs
which they do not see.
This experiment is rendered more particularly cruel by the fact that
anaesthetics cannot be used, precisely because the point in question is the
sensibility or non-sensibility of the animal, and consequently by its very
nature the operation cannot be made on the insensible animal.[1]
And now, at once entering further into the difficulty of the problem of
vivisection, we may ask ourselves if we have the right to allow
demonstrations of experimental physiology on living animals that have been
rendered insensible by chloroform.
Although, further on, I intend coming back to this important question of
anaesthetics, I will say at once I do not understand what repugnance there
can be to operating upon an anaesthetised animal. Once he is insensible he
cannot suffer; why hesitate, therefore, to perform prolonged experiments
upon that insensible being? It appears to me just as inhuman to boil milk
as to excite the pneumogastric nerve of a dog rendered incapable of
suffering. The milk does not suffer; the dog does not suffer; in both cases
it is living matter, but insensible living matter. Consequently, as far as
physiological demonstrations are concerned, every individual capable of
reflection should recognise that there is nothing wrong in experimenting
upon animals that cannot suffer.
I shall, however, make two restrictions. The first is that professors
should energetically call the attention of the pupils to the fact that the
animal is insensible, and that no one has the right to make the experiment
upon a sensitive animal; that we, physiologists, more than all other men,
are under the obligation of dealing humanely with animals. The professor of
physiology should take advantage of the occasion to develop in his hearers
the best and noblest sentiments, those of pity and of generosity. In a
word, he should excuse himself, so to speak, for performing vivisection,
and prove that such is only legitimate when it entails no suffering.
The second restriction is that the animal thus chloroformed or anaesthetised
should never be permitted to awaken. If he shows the slightest sign of
sensibility, he should be given chloroform until anaesthesia is complete,
and, finally, he ought to be killed after the experiment, without allowing
him to regain consciousness.
After all, death under these conditions is a painless end. We ourselves,
who will disappear after a long, and certainly painful, agony, in those
weary moments of pain which will precede our end, shall envy that absence
of suffering, that rapid end of all pain, which is the death of an animal
under an anaesthetic.
Let us, therefore, banish every painful experiment the object of which is
purely didactic. Moreover, I fail to see what experiments in painful
vivisection are necessary for the teaching of physiology. Studies on reflex
movement can be made perfectly well on a decapitated animal; and in that
case it is well understood that there can be no question of pain; for it
would be absurd to suppose that the spinal cord possesses the power of
receiving the notion of pain. Such a supposition would mean the negation of
the best-established facts of physiology.
Experiments on the heart (notably of the frog and the tortoise) are
performed very much better on a decapitated animal than on an animal which
is intact; and experiments can even be made on the heart separated from the
organism. It would be downright puerile to lack the courage to watch the
beating of the living heart of a dead tortoise! As for the mammalia, all
experiments on the heart and on the respiration necessary in a course of
lectures on physiology are admirably carried out on an animal rendered
completely insensible.[2]
We have not, however, quite finished with the difficulties of physiological
instruction: there are certain poisons for which chloroform cannot be used.
As the essential property of chloroform is to deaden the nervous cells, the
effects of some poisons cannot be studied in an animal profoundly
chloroformed. We can watch very well indeed the effects of carbonic oxide,
which poisons the blood, but many other poisons no longer produce their
characteristic symptoms; nevertheless, it is of the highest importance to
show medical students the effects of certain formidable toxic substances.
Permit me to quote myself. However little I may be a partisan of painful
experimental demonstrations, I make one exception for an experiment which I
consider it essential to present, in all its horror, before the young men
who attend my lectures. I refer to absinthe. If two or three drops of
essence of absinthe are injected into the veins of a dog, he is at once
seized by a violent attack of epilepsy with hallucinations, convulsions,
and foaming at the mouth. It is truly a terrible sight, one which fills
with disgust and horror all who have witnessed this experiment. But it is
precisely for the sake of arousing this disgust, this horror, that I
perform the experiment. The unfortunate dog will, during ten minutes, have
had an attack of intoxication and absinthian epilepsy; but at the end of an
hour he will have recovered completely. At the same time, the two hundred
students who have witnessed this hideous spectacle will retain, profoundly
engraved on their minds, the memory of that epileptic fury, a memory which
will remain with them to the end of their days. They will then be able, by
their propaganda against absinthe, to exercise around them a salutary
influence, to prevent perhaps ten, fifteen, one hundred human personalities
from destroying themselves by the use of this abominable poison. After all,
it is better to give a dog ten minutes of absinthism than to allow twenty
human families to be plunged, by absinthism, into degradation and misery.
Finally, as far as surgical exercises are concerned, _they should never be
made on a living animal_; as regards demonstrations of experimental
physiology intended for instruction, _they should be made only on
decapitated or anaesthetised animals_; and as for intoxications,[3] save on
very rare and altogether exceptional occasions, _they should not be made
the object of experimental demonstrations_.
It seems to me that these formal declarations might be accepted by every
physiologist as well as by every anti-vivisectionist.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The usages in English laboratories in relation to this experiment are
in accord with Professor Richet's views.--(W. D. H.)
[2] It may not be known to many readers, that it is possible to keep alive
for hours and even days the heart entirely removed from the body of a dead
mammal. On such a heart the action of drugs can be admirably studied and
demonstrated. I once had in my own laboratory a rabbit's heart that
continued to beat for nearly five days after the remainder of the rabbit
had served for the dinner of my laboratory attendant.--(W. D. H.)
[3] The word intoxication here and elsewhere is used in its literal sense,
viz., poisoning. It is not limited, as in popular parlance, to the
poisonous effects of alcohol.--(W. D. H.)