410 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Iq recent times it has been discov- 

 ered that there is a iinitv of method and 

 law runninji: tlirough all forms of or- 

 ganic life, such as was never suspected 

 in former ages. This was a great step 

 in the progress of science, and a great 

 opening for the physician and surgeon, 

 as the whole realm of inferior life was 

 at once made tributary to the devel- 

 opment of the physician's art that is, 

 the human vivisector, who had been 

 hitherto greatly cramped and embar- 

 rassed by the difficulties and limited 

 scope of his operations, could now car- 

 ry on his inquiries more thoroughly and 

 comprehensively by experiments upon 

 the lower animals. It was a grand pos- 

 sibility, and, broadly considered, forms 

 the most important step in the prog- 

 ress of medical and surgical science and 

 art. 



But, here again, ignorance and prej- 

 udice have, even in our day, combined 

 to hinder the use and extension of 

 knowledge vital to human benefit. As 

 the human body was once forbidden to 

 be dissected, so now it is forbidden to 

 vivisect the lower animals. Anti-vivi- 

 section societies are formed, and anti- 

 vivisection legislation is sought and has 

 been obtained to defeat the work of the 

 experimental physiologist. The anti- 

 vivisectionists express great sympathy 

 for the poor dumb animals, and assume 

 to be their protectors. The sympa- 

 thy is commendable, the function as- 

 sumed a most proper one, and the field 

 for the exercise of both boundless, so 

 that these friends of the suffering ani- 

 mals can exhaust all their energies in 

 protective work, without meddling with 

 the physiologists. 



But these stupid zealots deny that 

 there is anv use in vivisection, or that 

 any good has ever come from it. They 

 profess to know more about the mat- 

 ter than the physiologists and sur- 

 geons, and demand that Government 

 shall stop the practice entirely. We 

 have now a fresh illustration of what it 

 it is that they would sui)press. A malig- 



nant case of cancer of the stomach, such 

 as have hitherto resisted all remedies, 

 has been cured by a surgical operation 

 which could never have been success- 

 fully performed but for long appren- 

 ticeship in vivisection. A large fibrous 

 cancer had grown over the pyloric ori- 

 fice of the stomach through which the 

 food passes into the intestine, which 

 was nearly closed, and must soon have 

 killed the patient. The stomach was 

 opened, the cancerous tumor removed, 

 a new orifice prepared, the intestinal 

 tube sewed fast to the stomach, and 

 the patient recovered. The operation 

 was performed by Professor Theodor 

 Billroth, of Vienna, and his account of 

 it was translated by the United States 

 Minister to Austria, Hon. John A. Kas- 

 son, and sent to the " New York Trib- 

 une," from which we copy it. Profess- 

 or Billroth says : 



The removal of the frequently occurring 

 carcinoma of the stomach, against which all 

 internal remedies have been appHed in vain, 

 by the aid of surgery, has long been the sub- 

 ject of debate. Seventy years ago, a young 

 physician, Karl Theodor Merrem, published 

 a pamphlet; in which he demonstrated, by 

 experunents made upon three dogs, two of 

 which survived the operation, that it was 

 possible to cut out the pylorus and to join 

 the duodenum with tlie stomach. He went 

 even so far as to propose this operation in 

 cases of human beings suffering with incura- 

 ble carcinoma of the pylorus. In those days 

 the conviction that the processes of life, their 

 interruption and their equalization, were es- 

 sentially the same in the human body and 

 that of animals, had not obtained sufficiently, 

 nor had the operative technique advanced ftir 

 enough to cause the significance of these ex- 

 periments to be fully appreciated and to ren- 

 der the application of the physiological result 

 upon the human body possible. The best 

 surgeons of France, England, and Germany 

 have in the course of this century discussed 

 the best methods of joining wounds of the 

 stomach and the intestines. Since the dLs- 

 coveiy by Lembert of the only true principle 

 upon which this operation can be carried out 

 successfully, satisfactory results became of 

 more frequent occurrence. But the excision 

 of diseased parts of the intestines was not at- 

 tempted until about tin years ago. In 1871 



