96 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 







our knowledge of these functions is derived from studies 

 made upon the frog and other animals low in the scale of 

 life. The students may therefore learn these phenomena 

 from experiments upon frogs. 



The majority of the experiments which the students 

 perform are made upon " surviving " parts. The head of 

 the frog -or tortoise is cut off, or the brain is painlessly 

 destroyed. The pain-perceiving organ is thus removed. 

 The animal is in the legal sense dead ; but the heart may 

 continue to beat, and the muscles and nerves may remain 

 alive for a considerable time. If from such an animal the 

 gastrocnemius muscle, the principal one in the calf of the 

 leg, be removed together with the branch which it receives 

 from the sciatic nerve, the muscle will shorten, or contract, 

 when the nerve is stimulated, and will lift a weight. 



The students in the regular courses in the Harvard 

 Medical School do not operate upon warm-blooded ani- 

 mals. The number of such animals used for purposes of 

 instruction is very small. For the demonstrations to be 

 given in 1902 before the class in physiology, two pigeons, 

 six rabbits, and two dogs will be required. Such ani- 

 mals are always fully anesthetized, and suffer no pain 

 \vhutever. 



There is great misunderstanding regarding the nature of 

 physiological research. Many of the laity believe that the 

 terms physiologist and vivisector are identical, whereas the 

 majority of physiological investigations require no opera- 

 tions on living animals. Equally erroneous is the idea that 

 investigations are pursued by incompetent students. Of 

 the thirty-four investigations published in the last six years 

 by the Department of Physiology in the Harvard Medical 

 School only three were made by students. One of the 

 three did not require any operation upon animals, the other 

 two were performed under the personal supervision of a 

 professor, and with his assistance. 



