THE CONQUEST OF DISEASE 



its false statements. This discredited woman 

 at the time these lines are being written is ap- 

 pearing in America, repeating her falsehoods 

 from the public platform.* 



During the summer months when the De- 

 partment of Health of New York City was 



*A more recent illustration may be cited: A New York 

 daily paper has published for the ' ' Antiviviseetion Society" 

 a series of reports of ' ' cruelties ' ' to animals purporting to 

 have come from employes of the Rockefeller Institute of 

 Medical Research. Several whole pages have been spread with 

 matter of this sort, which is based upon the statements of three 

 ex-employes of the Institute, consisting of a woman who had 

 been employed as a cleaner and helper, and two men who 

 had been dismissed for inefficiency. These people, in the hands 

 of the "Antivivisection Society," made statements which 

 were a combination of falsehoods and truths with false color- 

 ing, all of which when edited by the propagandists of "anti- 

 vivisection" produced a tale well qualified to harrow the 

 undiscerning. 



The sociologic importance of this matter does not lie in 

 the fact that these ignorant and plastic persons have been 

 led into producing false statements, but rather in the fact 

 that an organized effort is made by well intending women to 

 hamper this beneficient work, and that a newspaper can be 

 found so ready to pervert the truth and inflict harm upon 

 society. 



Concerning this subject, the New York Times, (Dec. 28, 

 1909,) says: "The Herald, continuing its mysterious efforts 

 to bring medical science into public 'disrepute efforts which, 

 so far as they may be successful, can only make more numerous 

 the dupes of charlatans and the mystical cults devoted a page 

 of its space yesterday to a description of animal experimen- 

 tation in the Rockefeller Institute as seen by a woman whose 

 right to speak with authority on the subject she proves by say- 

 ing in her affidavit: 'I went there Oct. 21, 1908, cleaning in 

 the afternoons. ' And it is upon criticism from this person 

 that the antivivisectionists and their journalistic supporters 

 expect us to base the belief that Dr. Flexner and his carefully 

 chosen associates are guilty, not only of atrocious cruelty 

 in their work, but of performing it in a way so slovenly and 



156 



