86 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



theory of disease, applied practically by Lister, has trans- 

 formed surgery and obstetrics. 



The beginning of wound-infection is lost in prehistoric 

 time. What countless thousands have perished from this 

 cause ! Could the dead be summoned back, what throngs 

 would rise to acclaim these benefactors of mankind ! How 

 moving is the thought that these researches will protect 

 generation after generation, age upon age, so long as 

 knowledge shall endure ! 



Antiseptic methods were actively used in the surgical 

 wards of the City Hospital in 1885 when I became a resi- 

 dent physician, but they were far from the perfection they 

 have since attained. The technique of abdominal opera- 

 tions was but little understood, and the mortality from 

 wounds of the intestine and other injuries necessitating the 

 opening of the abdomen was very great. The wonderful 

 successes of abdominal surgery, based largely on experi- 

 mentation upon living animals, were not then dreamed of. 

 The surgery of the brain and the spinal cord had scarcely 

 made a beginning; here, too, experimentation upon living 

 animals had not yet led the way. But it is not my inten- 

 tion to relate the advances in medicine and surgery during 

 the past seventeen years. This is not the place in which 

 to tell the wonderful story of the conquest of hydrophobia 

 nor to describe the campaigns against blood-poisoning, 

 tetanus, myxedema, tropical diseases, snake venom, and 

 the plague. I can but mention here the rapidly approach- 

 ing downfall of yellow fever and malaria, the great reduc- 

 tion in the mortality from diphtheria and consumption, and 

 the immense sums that have been saved the State by the 

 new knowledge regarding anthrax, Texas fever, and other 

 infectious diseases of domestic animals. Much of this 

 beneficent work would have been impossible without ex- 

 perimentation upon living animals. 



The imagination does not easily compass the vast issues 



