OUR RECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION. 7 



It can not be claimed, of course, as to all this wonderful history of 

 abdominal surgery and remember that in 18G2, when I was a medical 

 student, I heard ovariotomists denounced from a professor's chair as 

 murderers ! that experiments upon animals have done the whole 

 work. No one man, no one series of experiments has sufficed, and 

 experiment alone would not have done it. But had such experiments 

 not been made on animals, as to the peritoneum, the pedicle, the su- 

 tures, the ligatures, etc., we should be far behind where we now are, 

 and still be ignorantly sacrificing human life and causing human suf- 

 fering. 



But to return to America. The first condition to successful treat- 

 ment is an accurate knowledge of what any disease is its cause and 

 its course then we may guide it, and in due time, it may be, cure it. 



Before Dr. H. C. Wood's* accurate experiments on the effects of 

 heat on animals, the nature and effects of sunstroke were almost mat- 

 ters of mere conjecture. Every one had his own theory, and the treat- 

 ment was equally varied. Even the heat-effects of fever itself the 

 commonest of all symptoms of disease were ill understood. Wood 

 exposed animals to temperatures of 120 to 130 Fahr. and studied the 

 effects. These experiments have often been alluded to as "baking 

 animals alive." You will note that the heat was no greater than that 

 to which laborers are frequently exposed in our hot summer-days, 

 when working in the sun or in many industrial works. His experi- 

 ments showed that the effects of sunstroke or, as he happily termed 

 it, Thermic or heat fever, a scientific name now widely adopted were 

 solely due to the heat, death following from coagulation of the muscu- 

 lar structure of the heart, or by its effects on the brain. They ex- 

 plained also many of the phenomena of ordinary fever as the result of 

 heat alone. They have established the rational and now generally- 

 adopted treatment of sunstroke by reduction of the body-tempera- 

 ture ; and the same method is now beginning to be appreciated and 

 employed in ordinary fever, f 



The same observer, with Dr. Formad, has made important experi- 

 ments on the nature of diphtheria, and when we learn, as we probably 

 soon shall, how to deal with the microscopic forms of life which seem 

 to be its cause, it will not be too much to hope that we may be able 

 to cope far more successfully with a disease now desolating so many 

 homes. 



In India alone twenty thousand human beings die annually from 

 snake-bite, \ and as yet no antidote has been discovered. How can we 



* Wood, "Thermic Fever or Sunstroke," Philadelphia, 18*72. 



f Eighteen out of Wood's experiments were on the general effects of heat, as above 

 alluded to. In six others the local effects of heat (135 to 190 Fahr.) on the brain, and 

 in four others the local effects (up to 140 Fahr.) on the nerves were studied, and gave 

 most valuable results, entirely and evidently unattainable on man. 

 % Fayrer, " Thanatophidia of India," p. 32. 



