Animal Experimentation 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE 



(President Eliot was not in the country at the time of the hearings in 

 1901. The following is the main part of his statement made at the similar 

 hearings in 1900.) 



THE question, Why not license vivisectors? has been asked. 

 I want to answer that question. There is no authority 

 competent to examine the licensees. We may examine 

 plumbers or dentists or physicians, and license them, be- 

 cause we can obtain a board competent to pass upon their 

 qualifications ; but there is no possibility of determining 

 in that way the qualifications of the rare men who are com- 

 petent to devote themselves to medical research. There 

 are few such men in Massachusetts, and few in any civilized 

 State. Sitting behind me is such a man, a professor in the 

 Harvard Medical School, who makes all the diphtheria an- 

 titoxin supplied in Massachusetts by the State Board of 

 Health. It is the best made in the country. Now there 

 is no one in the United States competent to examine Pro- 

 fessor Smith and give him a certificate of qualification for 

 that beneficent work. 



Bishop Lawrence has referred to antitoxin ; but he did 

 not mention that in Massachusetts the mortality from diph- 

 theria has been reduced from thirty-seven to eleven per 

 cent in hospitals, and below that in private practice. What 



