OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION. 5 



ity in ophthalmic surgery, piscidia as a substitute for opium, the hypo- 

 dermic method of using drugs, and so on through a long list. And, 

 as to the old drugs, it may be truly said that we have little exact, that 

 is scientific, knowledge of any one except through experiments upon 

 animals;* 



Let us see now something of what America has done in advancing 

 practical medicine by vivisection. In passing, I may say that the 

 assertion that America has contributed but little, so far from being an 

 argument for the restriction of vivisection, is a strong argument for 

 its further cultivation, in order that greater good may result from 

 remarkable discoveries here, equal to those that I shall show have 

 been made in Europe. 



Wounds of the abdomen, especially gunshot-wounds, are among 

 the most fatal injuries known to surgery. A small, innocent-looking, 

 external pistol-wound may cover multiple and almost inevitably fatal 

 perforations of the abdominal contents. The recoveries from 3,717 

 such wounds during the late civil war only numbered 444, and of 

 those with escape of the intestinal contents the recoveries, says Otis, 

 may be counted on one's fingers. The prevailing treatment as laid down 

 in our text-books has been purely conservative, treating symptoms as 

 they arise. The brilliant results achieved in other abdominal opera- 

 tions have led a few bold spirits, such as our own Sims, Gross, Otis, 

 McGuire, and others, to advocate the opening of the abdomen and the 

 repair of the injuries found. 



In May of last year, Parkes, of Chicago, reported to the American 

 Medical Association f a series of systematic experiments on thirty-seven 

 dogs, that were etherized, then shot, the abdomen opened, and the 

 wounds of the intestines, arteries, mesentery, etc., treated by appro- 

 priate surgical methods. The results confirmed the belief awakened 

 by earlier experiments and observations that surgery could grapple 

 successfully with multiple and formidable wounds, by sewing them 

 up in various ways, or even by removing a piece of the bowel and 

 uniting the cut ends. Hard upon the heels of this important paper, 



# For three hundred years digitalis, for instance, has been given as a depressant of 

 the heart, and, when a student, I was taught to avoid it carefully when the heart was 

 weak. But the accurate experiments of Bernard and others have shown that it is, on the 

 contrary, actually a heart tonic and stimulant. So long as I live I shall never forget the 

 intense joy of myself and the agonized parents, when one bright young life was brought 

 back from the very grave, some five years ago, by the knowledge of this fact, and this is 

 but one of many such cases. Thus have the action and dangers of our common anaesthet- 

 ics been positively and accurately ascertained ; thus the action of ergot on the blood- 

 vessels, explaining alike its danger as an article of food and its wonderful use in certain 

 tumors of the uterus and diseases of the nervous centers ; thus, too, every one who gives 

 opium in its various forms is a debtor to Bernard, and every one who gives strychnine a 

 disciple of Magendic. 



f "Medical News," May 17, 1884. I shall refer readers frequently to this journal, as 

 it is often more accessible than foreign journals, and it will refer them to the original 

 papers. 



