184 THE WORK OF THE DIGESTIVE GLANDS. 



Biological experiment, to come back to it, requires therefore, insti- 

 tutes, which will cost hundreds of thousands of roubles. With us, how- 

 ever, this form of experiment has often met with the most bitter hostility. 

 Private individuals and authorities give willingly to the building of new 

 hospitals or clinics. But the needs and wishes of experimenters are mostly 

 repulsed. They can neither find, nor reckon upon sympathy with 

 their objects. Experiments on animals are often depicted in the most 

 malicious way as animal torture. The underlying lofty idea is obscured, 

 and the regrettable but unavoidable outward presentment is seized 

 hold of. Investigators themselves, who pass their whole time in the 

 laboratory, and have no regular intercourse with the outside world, 

 cannot influence the opinion of the public with regard to experiments 

 and experimenters. It is your duty, gentlemen I appeal to the 

 medical men in my audience to assist us here. You move about every 

 day amongst society, and come into contact with its highest and lowest 

 grades. You are linked with it by the most intimate relationships. 

 You take an active part in the greatest joys, and the keenest sorrow's 

 of mankind. Should you wish to speak in defence of our science, which 

 serves the life and health of mankind, your words will be listened to. 

 Therefore, it lies with you to spread the conviction amongst the public, 

 that experiments upon animals are unavoidably necessary for the 

 advancement of medicine, and of the greatest conceivable importance 

 to it. You must make it understood that the greater the perfection 

 attained by means of experiments upon animals, the more certainly will 

 patients be cured, and the less frequently will they have to submit 

 to trials between this and that remedy, with possibly serious conse- 

 quences. Take, for example, the following instance. If more had been 

 known by experiment upon animals concerning extirpation of the 

 thyroid body, the early unhappy results of its removal from patients 

 suffering from goitre, would not have occurred. There resulted, as you 

 know, an incurable condition of cretinism. Make it manifest, there 

 fore, to the public that modern medicine has passed the stage of the 

 gruesome experiment upon man himself. 



It is well known that medicine in its choice of therapeutic remedies, 

 has drawn largely upon the experience acquired by their popular 

 application. But this experience was gained at the expense of a 

 great sacrifice of mankind. This can be judged of by instances, which 

 even now"are by no means uncommon, when, for example, in an out-of- 

 the-way village, and, unfortunately, it is not confined to out-of-the-way 

 villages, the patient succumbs to the revolting torture of uncalled-for 

 attempts' at healing on the part of some quack. And yet does not 

 nature and "religion tell us that animals are provided for the service 

 of mankind, not, of course, to be unnecessarily or uselessly sacrificed ? 



