IlS ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



assuming that disease and its treatment begins only at the 

 bedside, shows a deplorable ignorance of the great field 

 of modern medicine, of which preventive medicine is an 

 essential part. All studies in biology, but more particu- 

 larly those on warm-blooded animals, directly or indirectly 

 contribute to our information concerning disease processes. 

 There is therefore no justification whatever for discour- 

 aging the pursuit of experimental biology in any higher 

 institution of learning. In fact it should be strongly en- 

 couraged in order to reduce the growing burdens of the 

 strictly medical training. 



Section 2 is interpreted as permitting the inoculation of 

 bacteria and other agents of disease. As stated above, 

 inoculation experiments are simply the imitation of nature 

 for the purpose of multiplying cases of disease for study. 

 They are* the starting point, and the course of discovery 

 does not enable us to foretell what further experimentation 

 may be necessary to attain useful results. 



Section 3 places the study of experimental biology and 

 medicine in our higher institutions of learning under the 

 control of outspoken opponents of such study, and sub- 

 jects the teachers to the supervision of untrained inspectors. 

 The conception of what is or is not pain and its discrimi- 

 nation from discomfort, the use of anesthetics, the utility 

 or non-utility of investigations --all these difficult ques- 

 tions are to be passed upon by the opponents of this work, 

 and eventually by a jury. 



The bill as a whole, if enacted, will probably drive out 

 of the State the better class of teachers and investigators ; 

 or what is still more likely, it will prevent the State from 

 drawing into it from without the best men available. It 

 will discourage advances in the study of disease, because 

 no conscientious man \vill be able to act under a law re- 

 vealing so many possibilities for its transgression at any 

 moment. It will in all probability interfere with the prep- 



