114 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



mentation we may allow each separate cause of disease to 

 act by itself, so that we may know its relative importance 

 and the part it plays in the complex human diseases which 

 we can only observe from the outside, as it were. Nor 

 can we stop at inoculation experiments, as the promoters 

 of this bill would have us do, for instance, in the study of 

 germ diseases. The inoculation simply reproduces for 

 further study those diseases of man which can be produced 

 in animals, and it enables us to study diseases which are 

 still far away but threatening invasion. In this way the 

 bubonic plague and Asiatic cholera were studied, so that, 

 in cases of importation, the medical profession might 

 use preventive measures intelligently. Simply repeating 

 nature's methods does not necessarily reveal their mechan- 

 ism to us. We must go further and make a minute de- 

 tailed study of the sick animals. The promoters of this 

 bill say: You may inoculate animals, but you must let 

 them severely alone afterwards. Such a position enacted 

 into law would throw the whole machinery of the public- 

 health laboratories into confusion. It would interfere with 

 the production of antitoxin, since it would forbid the bleed- 

 ing of horses to obtain the curative agent for which the 

 horses are inoculated. Every new experiment would re- 

 quire legal interpretation before it would be safe to carry 

 it out. In short, inoculation experiments, unless for diag- 

 nostic purposes, are useless unless the inoculated animals 

 can be studied along chemical and physiological lines. 

 Are the petitioners competent to tell us where to stop in 

 order to make our labors useful ? Arc they or their agents 

 competent to draw the line between that which is necessary 

 and useful and that which is unnecessary and useless? 

 Arc they in a position to determine whether an anesthetic 

 is necessary or even desirable and when it is not? Do 

 they know when and how much any particular animal is 

 suffering? 



