774 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



These things give us ground for courage and hope, but not for 

 rest — not as long as diphtheria is annually taking from the homes 

 of this country its 49,677 children ; not while fevers are yearly 

 " baking to death " 126,332 of our people ; and while consumption 

 is causing years of suffering and the loss annually to this country 

 of 102,199 valuable lives. 



Were this wholesale slaughter the work of a national enemy 

 or of visible wild beasts, the public would not be slow in its ap- 

 preciation of any attempt to meet the common foe. But the 

 struggle is none the less real, and the intelligence and often the 

 courage and self-sacrifice required to carry it on are no whit less 

 than in the struggles of a race to subdue a savage continent or a 

 human enemy. With the conquest of all the continental areas 

 assured to man, if war, according to the hopes and theories of 

 some, were a thing of the past, the next great step in the develop- 

 ment of the race must be this conquest of the forces of disease. 

 A comparatively small branch of the human race has come to 

 face the issue squarely on experimental lines, and to realize the 

 fact that success can be achieved in no other way. The fate of 

 the Hindus stands as a warning that even an Aryan strain may 

 lapse into the abject imbecility of zoolatry and mysticism. The 

 race that meets this stupendous issue, that succeeds in giving to 

 men the laws by observance of which can be attained, not only 

 freedom from disease, but also the development of the highest 

 type of man, that race alone can carry out to its full perfection 

 the evolution of mankind. In course of its development this 

 race will be able to bestow incalculable benefits upon other races 

 and upon even the animal species which it finds useful to pre- 

 serve. 



IV.— THE ARGUMENT AS TO THE UTILITY OF VIVISECTION IN SPECIAL 



CASES. 



Attempts to prove or disprove the utility of vivisection by 

 special cases have needlessly complicated and embittered the dis- 

 cussion. Matters involved in the warmest medical controversy 

 have been freely introduced, and naturally an abundance of strong 

 language has been at the disposal of either side. It must there- 

 fore be distinctly understood as we proceed that this is not the 

 place to settle medical controversies nor to write a complete his- 

 tory of useful medicine. We are to deal not with medical con- 

 troversy nor with medical history, but with pure argument — argu- 

 ment to prove from special instances the use to humanity of 

 vivigectional methods of investigating the processes of living 

 Nature. This being our purpose, we must leave to experts all 

 discussions of such things as antitoxine, hydrophobia inoculation, 

 etc., and confine our attention to cases about which there is the 



