An Ethical Problem Part 26

Let us quote the entire pa.s.sage, written nearly a quarter of a century ago, in order to see what Dr. Keen ventured to call a "description of this same operation."

"We are almost at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Civilization is about to enter a new era, with new problems to solve, new dangers to confront, new hopes to realize. It is useless to deny the increasing ascendancy of that spirit, which in regard to the problems of the Universe, affirms nothing, denies nothing, but continues its search for solution; it is equally useless to shut our eyes to the influence of this spirit upon those beliefs which for many ages have anch.o.r.ed human conduct to ethical ideals. Regret would be futile; and here, perhaps is no occasion for regret. To the new spirit, which perhaps is to dominate the future, this longing for truth, not for what she gives us in the profit that the ledgers reckon, but for what she is herself--this high ambition to solve the mysteries that perplex and elude us, the world may yet owe discoveries that shall revolutionize existence, and make the coming era infinitely more glorious in beneficent achievement than the one whose final record History is so soon to end.

"But all real progress in civilization depends upon man's ethical ideals.... What shape and tendency are these hopes and ambitions to a.s.sume in coming years? What are the ideals held up before American students in American colleges? What are the names whose mention is to fire youth with enthusiasm, with longing for like achievement and similar success? Is it Richet, 'bending over palpitating entrails, surrounded by groaning creatures,' not, as he tells us, with any thought of benefit to mankind, but simply 'to seek out a new fact, to verify a disputed point?' Is it Mantegazza, watching day by day, 'con multo amore e patience moltissima,'--with much patience and pleasure-- the agonies of his crucified animals? Is it Brown-Sequard, ending a long life devoted to the torment of living things with the investion of a nostrum that earned him nothing but contempt? Is it Goltz of Strasburg, noting with wonder that mother love and yearning solicitude could be shown even by a dying animal, whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s he had cut off, and whose spinal cord he had severed? Is it Magendie, operating for cataract and plunging the needle to the bottom of the patient's eye, that by experiment upon a human being he might see the effect of irritating the retina? ... Surely, in these names, and such as these, there can be no uplift or inspiration to young men toward that unselfish service and earnest work which alone shall help toward the amelioration of the world."

In this pa.s.sage, there is an allusion of JUST SIX WORDS to one phase of experimentation which was subsequently found to be inaccurate, and corrected, as Dr. Keen has shown. But was it in accord with truth to refer to this pa.s.sing reference as "A DESCRIPTION of the same operation"? No reader of Dr. Keen's pages would be likely to investigate the statement. Was it fair to permit his readers to understand that a DESCRIPTION EXISTED, WHERE THERE WAS NONE?

There is yet another point to be noted. Referring to the experiments of Goltz, the impression seems to be given that not only was ablation of the breast mistakenly ascribed to the Strasburg vivisector, but that such a vivisection was imaginary: "NO SUCH OPERATION WAS EVER DONE." This is also untrue. Experiments of the kind have been done by other vivisectors, and they are recorded in their own reports. For example, de Sinety of Paris tells us in his "Manuel Pratique de Gynecologie" (Paris, 1879, p. 778), that upon female guinea-pigs, he had practised "l'ablation de ces glands pendant la lactation."[1]

Another French vivisector, Dr. Paul Bert, states that he had not only performed "l'ablation des mamelles chez une femelle de cochon d'Inde,"

but that he had succeeded in performing the operation on a female goat. The poor creature recovered from the vivisection, and later, gave birth to a kid, which was placed with the mother. What would happen to a new-born animal placed at the side of a mother whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s had been cut off?

"Le pet.i.t, animal, voulant teter, et trouvant pas de mamelles, a donne de violent coups de te^te dans le re'gion mammaire...."[2]

[1] In a reference to de Sinety's vivisections at page 171, in the present volume, there is a slight mistake. Although de Sinety, as shown above, had practised the ablation of the mammary glands during lactation, it would seem that mutilation rather than complete ablation preceded his experiments on the innervation of the mammary nerve. The sentence should read "cut into the b.r.e.a.s.t.s," and not "removed the b.r.e.a.s.t.s." He tells us that he made a considerable number of experiments of the kind upon female guinea-pigs. In one of them, for example, he laid bare the nerve and isolated it with a thread,--"le nerf mammaire d'un co^te est mis a' nu, et isole," and that when the electric current was used, extreme pain,--"un douleur tre's vivre" was excited, notwithstanding which the excitation was continued for ten minutes. (Gazette Me'd. de Paris, for 1879, p. 593).

[2] Comptes Rendus de la Soc. de Biologie, Paris, 1883, p. 778.

There is no need of completing the description. It was an experiment absolutely useless and without justification. We may confess that we read of such useless cruelties of experiment only with infinite disgust.

No matter how careful a writer may be, it is very rare that he escapes, from unfriendly readers, the imputation of inaccuracy.

Against writers of history--men like Froude, Macaulay, or Carlyle--the same charge has been made. But a critic whose microscopic eye discerns inaccuracy in others should be very careful to make no similar errors himself. The mistake upon which he has dwelt, was due to reliance upon the translation of another man. It may be of interest to point out that in his own writings Dr. Keen has made a precisely similar mistake; and that although it was pointed out and its untruth confessed many years ago, yet the false imputation appears again in the pages of his book, without correction or intimation of its utter untruth, on the page where it firs tis given to the reader of to-day.

In a pamphlet published during the closing years of the last century by the American Humane a.s.sociation, there appeared a strong condemnation of experiments made by a Dr. Sanarelli, apparently upon hospital patients, temporarily under his care. In an Italian periodical, the young scientist described his researches with remarkable frankness. He tells of the various symptoms of yellow fever, which by his serum he had caused his victims to suffer--the congestions, the haemorrhage, the delirium, the fatty degeneration, the collapse; and all these, he adds, "I have seen unrolled before my eyes, THANKS TO THE POTENT INFLUENCE OF THE YELLOW-FEVER POISON MADE IN MY LABORATORY."

So terrible a confession of human vivisection, it was eemed best by some English translator to suppress; and in various medical journals, both in England and America, the sentence here italicized did not appear. Finding it quoted only by the pamphlet that condemned human vivisection, Dr. Keen, without consulting the original, made the dishonouring imputation that perhaps it had been "DELIBERATELY ADDED"

by some one of his opponents, and this, too, notwithstanding he had referred to the original authority where the words were to be found. "Unfortunately," he explained at a later period, "I am not an Italian scholar, and have never even seen Sanarelli's original article"; he had placed dependence for his statement upon a "friend."[1] Who could have been this "friend" who pretended that he had read the article of Sanarelli in the original, and deceived him into making a charge of forgery, for the truth of which there was not a particle of foundation? But the thing of which his readers have a right to complain is not that his "friend" deceived him, for that may happen to anyone. It is this: that the imputation of forgery, the untruth of which was admitted long ago, still remains in the essay where it first appeared, and without there being the slightest disclaimer of the false insinuation. Let the reader turn to p. 125 of the work under review. There is the suggestion that Sanarelli's allusion to the poisons fabricated in his laboratory may have been "DELIBERATELY ADDED"--an imputation of forgery. WHERE ON THIS PAGE, IN THE TEXT OR BY FOOTNOTE, HAS THE AUTHOR WITHDRAWN THAT INSINUATION?

IT CANNOT BE FOUND.

[1] "Animal Experimentation," pp. 143-144.

II.

One of the most serious offences against literacy accuracy which this writer has apparently committed appears in the garbling of the opinions of Dr. Henry J. Bigelow of Harvard University, on the subject of vivisection. The case is of especial interest not only because the facts are so clear, but because they bring into relief certain methods of controversy, which by some seem to be regarded as entirely justifiable.

A sketch of the life of Dr. Bigelow, with extended quotations from his writings, will be found in the ninth chapter of the work now in the reader's hands. The opinions there expressed regarding vivisection are by no means extreme. No past writer on this subject has left behind him more abundant evidence of his position in this controversy. It was not animal experimentation that he condemned, but the cruelty that sometimes accompanies it, and to which, if vivisection be unregulated by law, it is so often liable.

How may the views of such a writer be attacked after he is in his grave? A physiological casuist would suggest, for instance, that although for forty years connected with a medical school, Dr. Bigelow really knew little or nothing about vivisection except what he had chanced to see in France, although his writings abound with allusions indicative of familiarity with laboratory scenes. It might be a.s.serted, indeed, that "in his later life," the great advocate of reform had changed his views; and as a fair exposition of the new att.i.tude, a brief warning against confounding a painful with a painless experiment would be quoted, after eliminating from the paragraph anything that referred to cruelty or abuse.

Is not this exactly what the author of "Animal Experimentation" has done in his attempt to discredit the weight of Dr. Bigelow's protests?

He tells his readers that "the opponents of research" quote the Harvard professor's earliest utterances "based on the suffering he saw at Alfort," but that they carefully omit this expression of his later opinions:

"The dissection of an animal in a state of insensibility is no more to be criticized than is the abrupt killing of it, to which no one objects. The confounding of a painful vivisection and an experiment which does not cause pain--either because the experiment itself is painless, like those pertaining to the action of most drugs, or because it is a trivial one and gives little suffering--has done great damage to the cause of humanity and has placed the opponent of vivisection at a great disadvantage.... A painless experiment on an animal is un.o.bjectionable."

This is all true enough. But can anyone call this paragraph a fair statement of Dr. Bigelow's "later views" on animal experimentation? It is merely a wise caution. Compare this brief quotation with the ninth chaper of the book in the reader's hands. Will anyone, after reading that chapter, maintain that THE THREE SENTENCES JUST CITED AFFORD A FAIR SUMMARY OF THE DEAD SURGEON'S LATEST VIEWS?

The reader will note that in the pa.s.sage just quoted from Bigelow, something appears to have been omitted before the final sentence. On turning to Dr. Bigelow's work, we find this sentence was eliminated from the foregoing quotation.

"IF ALL EXPERIMENTS IN PHYSIOLOGY WERE AS PAINLESS AS THOSE IN CHEMISTRY, THERE WOULD BE BUT ONE SIDE TO THE QUESTION."[1]

[1] Anaesthesia, by Henry J. Bigelow, M.D., p. 372.

Precisely! Then immediately following the words quoted by the author of "Animal Experimentation," the reader will discover another most significant pa.s.sage which was suppressed by the author of "Animal Experimentation":

"The extreme vivisector claims the liberty to inflict at his discretion, PROTRACTED AND EXCRUCIATING PAIN upon any number of dogs, horses, rabbits, guinea-pigs and other animals. The interest or honest enthusiasm he may happen to feel in some subject of physiology, however important, justifies in his mind THE EXHIBITION OF THIS EXCESSIVE PAIN TO CLa.s.sES, AND ITS REPEt.i.tION BY MEDICAL STUDENTS, PRACTICALLY AT THEIR OPTION. THIS IS AN ABUSE. Inasmuch as the reform of any abuse needs remedial measures, such measures have been inaugurated by permanently organized societies, which, even though they may not have been always and wholly right and temperate in their action, HAVE ERRED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION."

What was the reason for these suppressions? Why this garbling of Bigelow's "later views"? Do we find it impossible to comprehend why his comparison of physiological experiments with the painless procedures of chemistry should have been cut from the contecxt, or why the references to "PROTRACTED AND EXCRUCIATING PAIN" and the "exhibition of excessive pain to cla.s.ses" should have been omitted?

How could a writer, sincerely desirous of presenting his readers with a fair expression of Dr. Bigelow's opinions, have cut out every reference to the abuses of vivisection? How could he have omitted to quote such pa.s.sages as the following, which appear in essays written during the last year of his life:

"In short, although vivisection, like slavery, may embrace within its practice what is un.o.bjectionable, what is useful, what is humane, and even what is commendable, it may also cover, like slavery, what is nothing less than hideous. I use this word in no sensational sense, and appeal to those who are familiar with some of the work, in laboratories and out of them, to endorse it as appropriate in this connection." (368)[1]

"There is no objection to vivisection except the physical pain it inflicts." (368)

"No society, however extreme in its views or action, can legitimately object to painless experimentation, provided it is really painless.

BUT ANAESTHESIA SHOULD BE REAL, AND NOT MERELY NOMINAL OR FORMAL."

(374)

"Vivisection will always be the better for vigilant supervision."

(368)

"There is little in the literature of what is called the horrors of vivisection, which is not well grounded on truth. For a description of the pain inflicted, I refer to that literature." (363)

The necessity for brevity of quotation, no one can dispute. But the ethics of controversy are clear. One or two detached sentences should never be given as a fair representation of an opponent's views, if the general tenor of his writings would convey a contrary impression.

Thus to suppress and eliminate, what is it but to garble? In any young writer, would not such offences against veracity invite the severest condemnation?

[1] Henry J. Bigelow, M.D., Anaesthesia. Figures following quotations indicate the pages. Italics not in original.

III.

Another ill.u.s.tration of the unreliability of the volume under review may be found in its references to the Report of the Royal Commission on Vivisection. We are told, in the first place--and the untrue statement is thrice repeated with slightly different phraseology--that "on the Commission, the antivivisectionists were represented, and joined in this unanimous report."[2] It would be difficult to make an affirmation more notoriously untrue. In 1906, when the Commission was first named, it was a matter of common knowledge that NO ANTIVIVISECTIONIST WAS REPRESENTED THEREON. This shoudl be evident to anyong, one reading the following paragraph of the Commission's report:

"After full consideration, we are led to the conclusion that experiments upon animals, ADEQUATELY SAFEGUARDED BY LAW FAITHFULLY ADMINISTERED, ARE MORALLY JUSTIFIABLE AND SHOULD NOT BE PROHIBITED BY LEGISLATION."[1]

[2] Keen, "Animal Experimentation," p. 294. For repet.i.tions of the erroneous statement, see pp. xviii and 241.

[1] Report of Commission, p. 57, par. 97.

How could Dr. Keen have dreamed for a moment that any antivivisectionist would have signed such a recantation? Possibly the words here italicized explain why this paragraph was not quoted by the author of "Animal Experimentation." It referred to the conditions of permissible experimentation which, as yet, do not exist in any American state.

Of this important report, but a single brief paragraph of two sentences appears to have attracted the attention of Dr. Keen. It impresses him so strongly that he parades it no less than three times in various parts of his book:

"We desire to state that the harrowing descriptions and ill.u.s.trations of operations inflicted on animals which are freely circulated by post, advertis.e.m.e.nt, or otherwise, are IN MANY CASES calculated to mislead the public, so far as they suggest that the animals in question were not under an anaesthetic. To represent that animals subjected to experiments IN THIS COUNTRY are WANTONLY TORTURED would, in our opinion, be absolutely false." (Italics not in original.)

"This clear statement," adds the author of "Animal Experimentation" to one of his three quotations, "should end this calumny" (p. 241.) To what "CALUMNY" can he allude? The Commissioners are referring only to experimentation in England, where unauthorized painful experimentation is contrary to law--certainly not to America, where no Government supervision of any kind is to be found. Even in England, the words "IN MANY CASES" limit the application of condemnation. Would the author have its readers believe that painful or unjustifiable experiments are never performed? ON THE VERY PAGE OF THE REPORT TO WHICH HE REFERS US, in a paragraph immediately following that just quoted, there is reference to a London physiologist of distinction, who had testified that "he had performed PAINFUL experiments upon animals both in Germany and in this country." The Commission unanimously condemned his position as "untenable, and in our opinion, ABSOLUTELY REPREHENSIBLE." Would the author of "Animal Experimentation" regard this protest against certain experiments made by the men named in that paragraph, as a "calumny"?

The unfairness of giving out to the world merely two sentences as representative of the conclusions of an important Commission will become evident to anyone who reads other of the unanimous conclusions of this report. Take the following: "WE STRONGLY HOLD THAT LIMITS SHOULD BE PLACED TO ANIMAL SUFFERING in the search for physiological or pathological knowledge, though some have contended that such considerations should be wholly subordinated to the claims of scientific research, or the pursuit of some material good for man."[1]

Does this conclusion bear out the contention that animal suffering in the laboratory is a MYTH? Or take the recommendations of the Commission concerning CURARE, a drug which is used in every laboratory, but which, curiously enough, finds no mention in the index of Dr. Keen's book. The Report says: "Some of us are of the opinion that the use of CURARE should be altogether prohibited; but we are all agreed that if its use is to be permitted at all, an Inspector or some person nominated by the Secretary of State should be present from the commencement of the experiment, who should satisfy himself that the animal is, THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EXPERIMENT AND UNTIL ITS DEATH, IN A STATE OF COMPLETE ANAESTHESIA."[2] Why was this recommendation made, if the use of CURARE is never a.s.sociated with painful experimentation?

Or read yet further: "We are of the opinion that ADDITIONAL SAFEGUARDS AGAINST PAIN MIGHT BE PROVIDED, without interfering with legitimate research." These recommendations are incorporated in the final report of the Commissioners, not one of whom was an Antivivisectionist. Why were they not quoted by Dr. Keen.

[1] Report, p. 57, par. 96.

[2] Ibid., p. 61, par. 114.