OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION. 3 



To stand still, we must accept our present knowledge as a finality, 

 complacently pursuing the well-worn paths ; neither hoping nor trying 

 for anything better happily, again, an impossibility. 



To grow better, we must try new methods, give new drugs, per- 

 form new operations, or perform old ones in new ways ; that is to say, 

 we must make experiments. To these experiments there must be a 

 beginning : they must be tried first on some living body; for it is 

 often forgotten that the dead body can only teach manual dexterity. 

 They must then be tried either on an animal or on you. Which shall 

 it be ? In many cases, of course, which involve little or no risk to life 

 or health, it is perfectly legitimate to test probable improvements on 

 man first, although one of the gravest and most frequent charges 

 made against us doctors is that we are experimenting upon our pa- 

 tients. 



But in many cases they involve great risk to life or health. Here 

 they can not, nay, they must not, be tested first upon man. Must we, 

 then, absolutely forego them, no matter how much of promise for life 

 and health and happiness they possess ? If not, the only alternative we 

 have is to try them on the lower animals, and we would be most unwise, 

 nay, more, we would be cruel, cruel both to man and to animals, if we 

 refused to pain or even to slay a few animals, that thousands, both of 

 men and of animals, might live. 



Who would think it right to put a few drops of the hydrochlorate 

 of cocaine (a year ago almost an unknown drug) into the eye of a man, 

 not knowing what frightful inflammation or even loss of sight might 

 follow ? Had one dared to do it, and had the result been disastrous, 

 would not the law have held him guilty and punished him severely, 

 and all of us said Amen ? But so did Christison with Calabar bean, 

 and well-nigh lost his own life. So did Toynbee with prussic acid on 

 himself, and was found dead in his laboratory.* Accordingly, Roller, 



* I add the following striking extract from a speech in defense of vivisection, on 

 April 4, 1883, by Sir Lyon Playfair, deputy Speaker of the House of Commons no mean 

 authority. The italics are my own : 



" For myself, although formerly a professor of chemistry in the greatest medical 

 school of this country, I am only responsible for the death of two rabbits by poison, and 

 I ask the attention of the House to the case as a strong justification for experiments on 

 animals, and yet I should have been treated as a criminal under the present act had it then 

 existed. Sir James Simpson, who introduced chloroform that great alleviator of animal 

 suffering was then alive and in constant quest of new anaesthetics. He came to my 

 laboratory one day to see if I had any new substances likely to suit his purpose. I 

 showed him a liquid which had just been discovered by one of my assistants, and Sir 

 James Simpson, who was bold to rashness in experimenting on himself, desired immedi- 

 ately to inhale it in my private room. I refused to give him any of the liquid unless it 

 was first tried upon rabbits. Two rabbits were accordingly made to inhale it ; they 

 quickly passed into anaesthesia and apparently as quickly recovered, but from an after- 

 action of the poison they both died a few hours afterward. Now, was not this a justifi- 

 able experiment upon animals ? Was not the sacrifice of two rabbits north saving the life 

 of the most distinguished physician of his time? . . . Would that an experiment of a like 



