An Ethical Problem Part 7

"SIR,

"If the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals intends to give effect to the memorial presented to it on Monday, and do its utmost to put down the monstrous abuses which have sprung up of late years in the practice of vivisection, it will probably find that the greatest obstacle to success lies IN THE SECRECY WITH WHICH SUCH EXPERIMENTS ARE CONDUCTED, AND IT IS TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THAT SECRECY that its best efforts should be directed. So long as the present privacy be maintained, it will be found impossible to convict, for want of evidence. No student can be expected to come forward as a witness when he knows that he would be hooted from among his fellows for doing so, and any rising medical man would only achieve professional ruin by following a similar course. The result is that, although hundreds of such abuses are being constantly perpetrated among us, the public knows no more about them than what the distant echo reflected from some handbook of the laboratory affords. I venture to record a little of my own experience in the matter, part of which was gained as an a.s.sistant in the laboratory of one of the greatest living experimental physiologists.

"In that laboratory we sacrificed daily from one to three dogs, besides rabbits and other animals, and after four months' experience I am of opinion that not one of those experiments on animals was justified or necessary. The idea of the good of Humanity was simply out of the question, and would have been laughed at; THE GREAT AIM BEING TO KEEP UP WITH, OR GET AHEAD OF, ONE'S CONTEMPORARIES IN SCIENCE, even at the price of incalculable amount of torture needlessly and iniquitously inflicted on the poor animals. During three campaigns I have witnessed many harsh sights, but I think the saddest sight I ever witnessed was when the dogs were brought up from the cellar to the laboratory for sacrifice. Instead of appearing pleased with the change from darkness to light, they seemed seized with horror as soon as they smelt the air of the place, divining, apparently, their approaching fate. They would make friendly advances to each of three or four persons present, and as far as eyes, ears, and tail could make a mute appeal for mercy eloquent, they tried it in vain. Even when roughly grasped and thrown on the torture-trough, a low complaining whine at such treatment would be all the protest made, and they would continue to lick the hand which bound them, till their mouths were fixed in the gag, and they could only flap their tails in the trough as the last means of exciting compa.s.sion. Often when convulsed by the pain of their torture this would be renewed, and they would be soothed instantly on receiving a few gentle pats. It was all the aid and comfort I could give them, and I gave it often. They seemed to take it as an earnest of fellow-feeling that would cause their torture to come to an end--an end only brought by death.

"Were the feelings of experimental physiologists not blunted, they could not long continue the practice of vivisection. They are always ready to repudiate any implied want of tender feeling, but I must say that they seldom show much pity; on the contrary, in practice they frequently show the reverse. Hundreds of times I have seen, when an animal writhed with pain and thereby deranged the tissues during a delicate dissection, instead of being soothed, it would receive a slap and an angry order to be quiet and behave itself. At other times, when an animal had endured great pain for hours without struggling or giving more than an occasional whine, instead of letting the poor mangled wretch loose to crawl about the place in reserve for another day's torture, it would receive pity so far that it would be said to have behaved well enough to merit death, and as a reward would be killed at once by breaking up the medulla with a needle, or 'pithing,'

as this operation is called. I have often heard the professor say, when one side of an animal had been so mangled and the tissues so obscured by clotted blood that it was difficult to find the part searched for, 'Why don't you begin on the other side?' or 'WHY DON'T YOU TAKE ANOTHER DOG? WHAT IS THE USE OF BEING SO ECONOMICAL?' One of the most revolting features in the laboratory was the custom of giving an animal, on which the professor had completed his experiment, and which had still some life left, to the a.s.sistants to practise the finding of arteries, nerves, etc., in the living animal, or for performing what are called 'fundamental experiments' upon it--in other words, repeating those which are recommended in the laboratory handbooks.

"I am inclined to look upon anaesthetics as the greatest curse to vivisectible animals. They alter too much the normal conditions of life to give accurate results, and they are therefore little depended upon. THEY, INDEED, PROVE FAR MORE EFFICACIOUS IN LULLING PUBLIC FEELING TOWARDS THE VIVISECTORS THAN PAIN IN THE VIVISECTED.

Connected with this there is a horrible proceeding that the public probably knows little about. An animal is sometimes kept quiet by the administration of a poison called 'curare,' which paralyzes voluntary motion while it heightens sensation, the animal being kept alive by means of artificial respiration.

"I hope that we shall soon have a Government inquiry into the subject, in which experimental physiologists shall be only witnesses, not judges. LET ALL PRIVATE VIVISECTION BE MADE CRIMINAL, AND ALL EXPERIMENTS BE PLACED UNDER GOVERNMENT INSPECTION, and we may have the same clearing away of abuses that the Anatomy Act caused in similar circ.u.mstances.

"I am, sir, your obedient servant, "George Hoggan, M.B. and C.M.

"13, Granville Place, Portman Square, W."

One of the oldest members of the medical profession in Ma.s.sachusetts has also written of his experience in Be'rnard's laboratory, and his account of the cruelty there practised entirely accords with that of the English physician:

"When I was studying medicine in Paris, it was the custom of a distinguished physiologist to ill.u.s.trate his lectures by operations on dogs. Some of his dissections were not very painful, but others were attended with excruciating, long-continued agony; and when the piteous cries of these poor brutes would interrupt his remarks, with a look of suppressed indignation he would artistically slit their windpipes, and thus prevent their howling! Curiousity prompted me to inquire of the janitor whether, after this period of torment, these creatures were mercifully put out of misery; and I ascertained that such animals as did not succ.u.mb to the immediate effects of their mutilations were consigned to a cellar, to be kept, unattended and unfed, until wanted for the following lectures, which occurred on alternate days. I never noticed the slightest demonstration of sympathy on their behalf, except on the part of a few American students. These dogs were subjected to needless torture, for the mere purpose of ill.u.s.trating well-known facts, capable of being taught satisfactorily by drawings, charts, and models; and hence this cruelty, being unattended by any possible benefit to either students or mankind, was illegitimate and unjustifiable. But when it is considered that these same experiments might have been conducted under the influence of an anaesthetic, so as to minimize, if not remove, this needless suffering, this cold-blooded, heartless torture can only be characterized as contemptible and monstrous.

"From detailed accounts communicated to me by eye-witnesses of the incidents related, I entertain no doubt that barbarous cruelty was practised at that time in all the Parisian laboratories, though it is probable that, for novel and horrible experiments, none could rival the infernal ingenuity in this business of that master-demon, Claude Be'rnard."[1]

[1] Extracts from letter to Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April, 1895.

Such is the memory which Be'rnard has left for posterity. It was by useless cruelty that he impressed. And no American physiologist, sounding the praises of free and unrestricted vivisection, has ever yet ventured to criticize or to condemn either the man or his work.

Let us go back a little. By the year 1871, the agitation had gone so far as to be deemed worthy of consideration by the leading scientific body in Great Britain. At the meeting of the British a.s.sociation in Liverpool of that year, a committee was appointed to consider the subject of animal experimentation, and the result of their deliberations appears in the annual report. Regarding the practice, they suggest four recommendations or rules:

"1. No experiment which can be done under the influence of an anaesthetic ought to be done without it.

"2. No painful experiment is justifiable for the mere purpose of ill.u.s.trating a law or fact already determined; in other words, experimentation without the employment of anaesthetics is not a fitting exhibition for teaching purposes."

A third rule suggested that painful experiments should only be made in laboratories under proper regulation; and a fourth rule condemned veterinary operations for the purpose of obtaining manual dexterity.

It was evidently an attempt to allay agitation--there were no means of enforcing the recommendations concerning practices which the law did not touch.

One of the signers was Dr. Burdon Sanderson, a Lecturer on Physiology.

Early the following year he began the delivery of a course of lectures in the physiological laboratory of University College in London, ill.u.s.trated by vivisections. During one of these discourses, the lecturer made the following statement of his views:

"With respect to what are called 'vivisections,' I a.s.sure you that I have as great a horror of them as any members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The rules in respect to them are these: First, no experiment that can be done under the influence of an anaesthetic ought to be done without it. Secondly, no PAINFUL experiment is justifiable for the mere purpose of ill.u.s.trating a law or fact already demonstrated. Thirdly, whenever for the investigation of new truth, it is necessary to make a painful experiment, every effort should be made to insure success, in order that the suffering inflicted may not be wasted. For the question of cruelty depends not on the amount of suffering, but on its relation to the good to be attained by it."[1]

[1] Medical Times and Gazette, February 25, 1871.

The lecturer contended that no experiment should be performed by an unskilled person with insufficient instruments, and argued, therefore, in favour of the establishment of Physiological Laboratories, equipped with all modern devices and instruments for vivisection.

Some of his demonstrations were doubtless unproductive of pain, but in view of the fact that in other experiments no anaesthetic was employed, it may be questioned whether his second "rule" was always very strictly observed. In one lecture he referred to his demonstration "as the first time that we have applied electrical stimulus to a nerve," and explains that when the experiment is made on an animal paralyzed with curare, the effect is more complicated when a sensory nerve is irritated, since then "the arteries all over the body contract, because the brain is in action."[1] No plainer confession of the existence of sensibility could be made, yet for obvious reasons the lecturer carefully avoids admitting the presence of pain. During the following year there appeared articles describing "the teaching of practical physiology in the London schools." At King's College in London, for example, demonstrations were made by the lecturer, but "experiments on animals are never given to the ordinary student to do; Professor Rutherford's experience on this point is that such attempts result only in total failure."[2] On the other hand, at University College, the Continental method of teaching was to be found. "Student perform experiments on animals. Frogs, curarized or chloroformed, are given them, and the experiment which has been fully explained and demonstrated by the professor, is performed by them as far as practicable."[3] Here, then, we find introduced into England (and perhaps there existing in secret for some time before), that vivisection of animals in ill.u.s.tration of well-known facts, which, but a few years earlier, every leading medical journal of Great Britain had so emphatically reprobated and denounced.

[1] Medical Times and Gazette, June 17, 1871.

[2] Ibid., July 20, 1872.

[3] Medical Times and Gazette, July 27, 1872.

The Continental school of English physiologists seemed confident of victory. But the leading exponents of English ideals in medicine were not inclined to surrender at once; now and then we find them vigorously maintaining their ground, and disposed to contrast the science gained in the laboratory with that gathered by experience and fortified by reflection. Some extracts from a leading editorial in the Medical Times and Gazette are extremely suggestive of the conflict of opinions:

"The relation of physiology to practical medicine is a subject which has been brought prominently into notice by the address of Dr. Burdon Sanderson ... at the recent meeting of the British a.s.sociation. That address may be considered as the first authoritative and public announcement made in this country that IT IS THE AIM AND INTENTION OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF THOUGHT and work to separate themselves more and more from the school of practical medicine; no longer to consider themselves auxiliary to it except as other sciences--for instance, chemistry and botany--may be considered auxiliary to it, but to win a place in the public estimation for their science as one which shall be cultivated FOR ITS OWN SAKE...

"The teaching of experience is more reliable than physiological theories and opinions.... The history of the advance of the cure of disease is in the history of empiricism, in the best sense of that much-abused word. The history of retrogression in the art of curing disease is that of the so-called Physiological Schools of Medicine... Physiological theory, based on experiments on dogs, wishes us to believe that mercury does not excite a flow of bile; but here the common sense of the Profession, educated by experience, has refused to be led by physiological theory.... Modern physiological science has taught us little more than the necessity of pure air, water, and food, good clothing and shelter, moderation in eating and drinking, and regulation of the pa.s.sions--things, in fact, which are as old as the Pentateuch. We may safely a.s.sert that all the experiments made on luckless animals since the time of Magendie to the present, in France, America, Germany, and England, have not prolonged one t.i.the of human life, or diminished one t.i.the of the human suffering that have been prolonged and diminished by the discovery and use of Jesuits' bark and cod-liver oil."[1]

[1] Medical Times and Gazette (Editorial), September 7, 1872.

Early the next year (1873) was published the "Handbook of the Physiological Laboratory," compiled by leading men of the physiological party, among whom were Professors Sanderson, Foster, and Klein. Describing the method of performing various experiments upon animals, it included a particular account of some of the most excruciatingly painful of the vivisections practised abroad. So atrocious was one of the experiments thus described in this handbook for students that Professor Michael Foster, who wrote the description, afterward confessed that he had never seen or performed the experiment himself, partly "from horror of the pain." Reviewing the work, a medical journal justly declared that "the publication of this book marks an era in the history of physiology in England.... It shows THE PREDOMINANT INFLUENCE WHICH GERMANY NOW EXERCISES IN THIS DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE."[1] A professor of physiology, Dr. Gamgee, about the same time, refers to the physiological laboratories of Edinburgh, Cambridge, and London, and the part they sustained "in what I may call the Revival of the study of experimental physiology in England."[2]

[1] Medical Times and Gazette, London, March 29, 1873.

[2] Ibid., October 18, 1873.

Emboldened by continuing success, the advocates of Continental vivisection in England determined to advance yet another step. The annual meeting of the British Medical a.s.sociation for 1874 was to be held that year in August in the city of Norwich. A French vivisector, Dr. Magnan, was invited to be present, and to perform in the presence of English medical men certain experiments upon dogs. On this occasion, however, the public demonstration of French methods of vivisection did not pa.s.s without protest; there was a scene; some of the physicians present--among them Dr. Tufnell, the President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, and Dr. Haughton of the medical school in Dublin, denounced the experiments at the time they were made as unjustifiably cruel. Public attention was beginning to be aroused; it was decided to test the question, whether such exhibitions were protected by English law, and a prosecution was inst.i.tuted against some who had a.s.sisted in performing the experiments. Dr. Tufnell appeared to testify in regard to the cruelty of the exhibition, and Sir William Fergusson, surgeon to the Queen, who had only just retired from the presidency of the British Medical a.s.sociation, not only stigmatized one of the experiments as "an act of cruelty," but declared that "such experiments would not be of the smallest possible benefit."[1] The magistrates decided that while the case was a very proper one to prosecute, yet the gentlemen named as defendants were not sufficiently proven to have taken part in the experiment. The decision was not unjust; the real offender was safe in his native land.

[1] British Medical Journal, December 12, 1874.

It is not my purpose to trace the course of the English agitation against vivisection, except as it may be seen in the medical literature of the time; but one cannot refer to this period without mention of the name of Frances Power Cobbe. In 1863, while in Italy, she had protested, and not in vain, against the cruelties of Professor Schiff in Florence. Taking up the question again in 1874, she devoted the remainder of her life to the advancement of her ideals of reform.

It was to her zeal that in 1875 was founded the "Society for the Protection of Animals liable to Vivisection." At this period, then, three phases of opinion opposed one another; first, the antivivisectionists, who desired the total suppression by law of all animal experimentation; second, the physiological enthusiasts, few in number, but favourable to the introduction of the Continental irresponsibility, and eager to free vivisection from every semblance of restraint; and, thirdly, the great body of Englishmen and of the medical profession, whose views we have seen reflected in medical journals of the day. The popular attack upon all animal experimentation became so pressing that for a time the entire medical profession seemed to unite in its defence; and editorial s.p.a.ce once filled with denunciation of vivisection in France was now given over to criticism of the antivivisectionists of England. Yet, even at this period, there appeared no repudiation of those humane principles, so long professed by English medical men. One leading journal, the Medical Times and Gazette, thus suggests that very oversight of vivisection which we are told is impossible:

"Just as the law demands that a teacher of anatomy should take out a licence, and be responsible for the bodies entrusted to him, so a teacher of physiology might be required to take out some such licence as regards the teaching of practical physiology. We have never been of those who advocate the wholesale performance of experiments by students, especially on the higher animals, if they are of such a kind as to require any degree of skill for their performance. When the medical public seemed bitten with what was called 'practical physiology,' many were ready to advocate the performance of all kinds of experiments on living animals by uninstructed students. Against this notion we were first to protest, as being at once cruel and worse than useless; for an experiment performed by bungling fingers is no experiment at all, but wanton cruelty."

After explaining his position in favour of scientific research, the editor refers to a recent discussion on vivisection in London:

"Dr. Walker declared that his desire was not to stop scientific research, but the abuses which were connected with it. In the first place, he would not allow vivisection to be practised by incompetent students. This was nothing but wanton and unrighteous cruelty.

THEREFORE HE WOULD OBLIGE EACH VIVISECTOR TO OBTAIN LEGAL PERMISSION FROM COMPETENT AUTHORITY. Another abuse related to operations performed merely to demonstrate physiological phenomena already verified and established. Again, the number of animals vivisected was shamefully high. Persons unacquainted with physiological laboratories could form no idea of the lavish way in which animals were made to suffer days and weeks of anguish and acute pain. If the people knew of these sufferings, they would insist that the number of animals annually vivisected should be limited, and that no animal rearing its young should be experimented upon. Nor should it be allowable to operate on an animal more than once.... Lastly, every licensed vivisector should be obliged to send in an annual return, showing the number of vivisections performed, and the scientific results attained, which would prevent repeated operations with the same object. Nothing in any of these proposals, urged Dr. Walker, would interfere with the progress of science; they would simply stop the abuses which existed."[1]

[1] Medical Times and Gazette (Editorial), June 27, 1874.

In January, 1875, we find the London Lancet also suggesting legal supervision and restriction:

"We are utterly opposed to all repet.i.tion of experiments for the purpose of demonstrating established doctrines.... We believe an attempt might be made to inst.i.tute something in the way of regulation and supervision. IT WOULD NOT BE DIFFICULT, FOR EXAMPLE, TO IMPOSE SUCH RESTRICTIONS ON THE PRACTICE OF THESE EXPERIMENTS as would effectually guard against their being undertaken by any but skilled persons, for adequate scientific objects."[2]

[2] The London Lancet (Editorial), January 2, 1875.

A month later the Lancet devotes its leading editorial to a discussion of the ethics of vivisection. After criticizing the position taken by the antivivisectionists, the writer says:

"On the other side, the discussion has been conducted as if it concerned physiologists alone, who were to be a law unto themselves, and each to do what might seem right in his own eyes; that the matter was one into which outsiders had no right whatever to intrude; in fact, that 'WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT,' and so unquestionably right as to stand in no need of investigation or restriction. We have, from the first, striven to take a middle course, not because it was safe, but because it seemed to us the sound and true one. Without disguising the difficulties, we have nevertheless expressed our conviction that the subject was one about which it was impossible not to feel a sense of responsibility, and a desire to ascertain whether the line between necessary and unnecessary could be defined; and whether any attempt could be made to inst.i.tute something in the way of regulation, supervision, or restriction, so as to secure that, while the ends of science were not defeated, the broad principles of Humanity and duty to the lower animals were observed. Animals have their rights every bit as much as man has his...."

Admitting the probable necessity of some repet.i.tion of experiments in research, the writer continues:

"It is for the purposes of instruction, however, that it becomes questionable whether and to what extent experiments of this kind should be performed. A chemical lecturer teaches well, in proportion to the clearness with which he can demonstrate the correctness of his statements by experiment, and there is no doubt it is the same with a Lecturer on Physiology. Some persons seem to regard the advance of knowledge as the whole duty of man, and they would perhaps consider experimentation as justifiable in the one case as in the other. We cannot so regard it, for the simple and sufficient reason (as it seems to us) that the element of Life and Sensibility being present in the one case and not in the other, carries a responsibility with it. We contend that in any case where certain phenomena are known to follow a given experiment, when the fact has been established by the separate and independent observation of many different persons, a lecturer is not justified in resorting to it FOR THE PURPOSE OF MERE DEMONSTRATION WHERE ITS PERFORMANCE INVOLVES SUFFERING TO THE ANIMAL."[1]

[1] The London Lancet, February 6, 1875.

It is an instructive and interesting fact that one of the first steps toward the legal regulation of vivisection in England was taken by scientific men. The Lancet of May 8, 1875, contains the following paragraph: