1 62 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



But, accepting counsel's interpretation of the intention 

 of the bill, we, who know the details of the work in bac- 

 teriology, know that that work would be seriously inter- 

 fered with by the passage of this bill, and in spite of the 

 presence of this section. 



Take, for example, such an experiment as that upon 

 the effect of light on tuberculosis of the skin, which the 

 gentlemen of the committee saw on their visit to the 

 Harvard Medical School. 



The animal shown to you is only one of a series that 

 have been or that it is proposed to study. Skin tuber- 

 culosis is only one locality of one disease that it is intended 

 to use. 



To get any satisfactory idea of the action of light it will 

 be necessary to use some of the most active forms of infec- 

 tious material, and to watch their effects for perhaps a long 

 time. 



Yet the introduction of this material may be impossible 

 by simple subcutaneous injection --it may be necessary to 

 operate. If it should be necessary, anesthetics would be 

 employed ; but it would be useless to perform the opera- 

 tion if the animal had to be killed before coming out of 

 the anesthesia, for the results should be watched for a 

 long time. 



Furthermore, in the particular case called to your atten- 

 tion, the immediate conduct of the experiments is by a 

 non-graduate in medicine a student, who has not yet 

 completed his medical studies. 



This is but one instance ; and an almost interminable 

 scries could be brought before you, to show that bacteri- 

 ological experiments arc not to be classed by themselves 

 without absolute injustice; that they arc as essential!}' 

 experiments upon animals as are those of physiology, or 

 any other branch of biological investigation; that they 

 may and often do require operative procedures upon living 



