Dr Drummond o?* HUmaniti/ To Animals, 175 



hundred dogs have been dissected alive, to prove whether the 

 stomach is active or passive in vomiting ; but I would ask, 

 When an animal is writhing in agony, struck with dismay and 

 astonishment, with its belly opened, and its bowels exposed to 

 the atmosphere, are we to expect that, in all the horrors of this 

 situation, the stomach will exhibit itself, or perform its functions 

 just as if nothing had happened ? I cannot believe it ; and if 

 ten thousand such experiments as this were made, there still 

 will, and must be, a want of proof. The stomach may, in such 

 circumstances, be passive, though in the natural state of the ani- 

 mal, it may be active in vomiting; and, in fact, after all the 

 cruelties which have been practised by physiologists, we do not 

 at this moment know whether, in the natural and unmutilated 

 state of an animal, the stomach contracts in vomiting or not ; 

 and, fortunately, this of not one straw's consequence *. 



I believe, also, that little or no confidence is to be placed in 

 the accuracy of conclusions respecting the natural functions of 

 viscera drawn from observation of what occurs in animals labour- 

 ing under extreme suffering and terror. The pancreas, for ex- 

 ample, has always been considered as a gland similar to those 



• Since writing the above, I have noticed the following very satisfactory 

 remarks on this subject, in the seventh edition of C. Bell's Anatomy and 

 Physiology of the Human Body, vol. iii p. 275. 



" There is a very curious experiment by M. Magendie, which has much 

 puzzled physiologists. He cut out the stomach of a large dog, and substi- 

 tuted in its place a bladder, which he fastened to the oesophagus, and having 

 excited vomiting^ by pouring emetic solution into the veins, the contents of this 

 bladder were discharged as from the natural stomach. The conclusion has 

 been too hastily formed, that the stomach has therefore nothing to do with 

 the action of vomiting. But it ought to be recollected, that the bladder re- 

 presents a relaxed stomach, whereas the stomach is muscular and active, and 

 capable of resisting the action of the abdominal muscles and diaphragm, un- 

 less there be a consent of the action of the stomach, and the action of the 

 muscles of respiration. Thus, if we could suppose that a man had a distend? 

 ed bladder for a stomach, whilst he exerted himself forcibly and retained his 

 breath, the contents would be discharged. So would they, if he lay with his 

 belly over a yard-arm. But no such discharge takes place from the natural 

 body, because the upper orifice of the stomach resists I This resistance does 

 not take place in vomiting ; and, therefore, I say, the stomach has to do with 

 vomiting, in spite of all the cruelties which have been committed. The 

 lower orifice is contracted, the coats of the stomach are contracted, and the 

 upper orifice is relaxed in the act of vomiting, while the power of ejecting 

 the contents is very principally owing to the violent throws and contractions 

 of the abdominal muscles and diaphragm." 



