74 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



Suffice it to say that the experiments alluded to \vere 

 either painless, or that the pain was slight and its infliction 

 quite justified by the importance of the result. Thus the ex- 

 periments performed by Dr. Minot and myself were made 

 to determine the influence of ether and chloroform on the 

 nerve centres which control the circulation of the blood, and 

 the results form part of the evidence which has convinced 

 physicians that ether is a safer anesthetic than chloroform. 



Of the physicians quoted in opposition to vivisection I 

 shall refer only to Dr. Bigelow, because he is perhaps the 

 most eminent, and is the only prominent physician in this 

 community who has advocated these views. His opinions, 

 as given in his address before the Massachusetts Medical 

 Society June 7, 1871, are continually appearing in anti- 

 vivisection literature. We must therefore try to estimate 

 the value of his testimony. No one can fail to recognize 

 the importance of Dr. Bigelow's contributions to surgical 

 science and practice. In his own domain of surgery he 

 was a brilliant operator, a tireless investigator of new 

 methods, an able and effective teacher, but upon the ques- 

 tion of vivisection his views seem to have been based upon 

 what he had witnessed many years before at the veterinary 

 school at Alfort (where undoubtedly many atrocities were 

 committed), and he had not controlled these early impres- 

 sions by any experience in modern physiological labora- 

 tories. It is evident, moreover, that whatever may have 

 been Dr. Bigclovv's views about vivisection in general, he 

 could have had no fear that any objectionable practices 

 would be permitted under the authority of Harvard Univer- 

 sity, for, in the same year in which he delivered the above 

 mentioned address, the medical faculty, of which he was a 

 most influential member, voted to establish its first physio- 

 logical laboratory. No one familiar with the history of the 

 school will believe that this could have been done had Dr. 

 Bigelow seriously opposed it. 



