MEDICAL SCIENCE AND PRACTICE. 



553 



Thus, in regard to Asiatic cholera, we have the 

 scientific infection experiments of Professor 

 Thiersch, and others, performed on a few mice ; 

 and, on the other hand, the popular experi- 

 ments which were performed on a half million 

 human beings in London, during the chol- 

 era epidemics of 1848-'4:9, and 1853- '54, by the 

 water companies. M. Villemin has gained 

 information of incalculable value concerning 

 the causes and nature of tubercle from his 

 laboratory experiments on other animals than 

 man, and has been followed by others who 

 have extended and developed his discoveries. 

 Professor Gerlach, of Hanover, has, in a simi- 

 lar manner, studied the transmissibility of 

 tubercle from animals to man by eating their 

 flesh and drinking their milk. The popular 

 experiments, performed by milk-dealers serv- 

 ing their customers, which lead us to sus- 

 pect that tuberculosis might be transmissible 

 through milk, are performed daily upon thou- 

 sands of human beings. The scientific experi- 

 ments which have made us certain of the fact 

 were conclusive when they amounted to half a 

 dozen. Thus, without making any account of 

 the relative value of human beings and ani- 

 mals, the scientific experiments are vastly 

 more economical than the popular. They 

 have the further advantage of being precise 

 and exact, while the popular experiments very 

 often have in them sources of ambiguity which 

 lessen their usefulness for teaching. The prin- 

 cipal problems to be solved in preventive 

 medicine are how, by cross-breeding or other- 

 wise, to convert a short-lived or constitution- 

 ally enfeebled stock into a long-lived or vig- 

 orous one, which has hardly yet become a 

 practical question; and how to avoid or resist 

 the extensive interferences which shorten life, 

 on which much has been learned by vivisec- 

 tion, and much remains to be learned. Of the 

 investigations in the latter line, which have led 

 to results of momentous value, are cited the 

 diversified researches of Pasteur and others 

 bn germs, and their specific applications to 

 the diseases of domestic animals and man ; 

 Drs. Klebs and Tommasi Crudelli's examina- 

 tions into the intimate cause of marsh -malaria; 

 Dr. Grawitz's studies of the conversion of 

 ordinarily harmless microphytes into agents of 

 deadly infectiveness ; Dr. Lister's applications 

 of Pasteur's discoveries to the antiseptic treat- 

 ment of wounds ; Professor Semmar and Dr. 

 Krajewski's discovery of inoculation against 

 septicaemia; and Dr. Schuller's contributions 

 to the treatment of tubercular and scrofulous 

 affections, on the basis of their microphytic 

 origin. No work has been performed of more 

 promise to the world than these various con- 

 tributions to the knowledge of disease, its 

 cure and prevention ; and they are contribu- 

 tions which, from the nature of the case, have 

 come, and could only have come, from the per- 

 formance of experiments on living animals. 



The controversy about vivisection which is 

 now going on, though at first sight appearing 



like a retrograde movement, will, in all proba- 

 bility, end in a substantial advance of the inter- 

 ests of medicine. The public, including even 

 the mass of the opponents of vivisection, have 

 only to bo properly informed of the immense 

 service it has been made and may yet be made 

 to render to the health and happiness of man- 

 kind, to be willing to give to suitably qualified 

 experimenters all the liberty of research they 

 require. The present contest is, in most of its 

 aspects, a repetition of the old battle which 

 was formerly waged against the dissection of 

 human bodies. Many of the stock-arguments 

 which were then employed in opposition to 

 the direct study of human anatomy are now 

 made to do duty over again against the study 

 of physiology through the analogies exhibited 

 in the structure of animals. Now, as then, 

 discussion is destined to result in enlighten- 

 ment, and vivisection will eventually be recog- 

 nized as a legitimate method of investigation. 



The most important step in therapeutics, and 

 probably the most important in the wliole his- 

 tory of that branch of the science, consists in 

 the adoption of a definite physiological aim in 

 the use of remedial measures, of the practice 

 of administering medicines with a definite pur- 

 pose to produce a distinct physiological effect, 

 instead of employing particular drugs with a 

 vague idea that general favorable results have 

 been remarked from their use. This principle 

 is the necessary result of the clearer* definition 

 of disease and of the action of drugs. When 

 the aggregate symptoms presented by a disease 

 were analyzed, one generally assumed a causal 

 relation to the others which singled it out as 

 the" object of therapeutical attack. Or, again, 

 the urgency of certain symptoms, or the irre- 

 mediable character of the essential lesions, ren- 

 dering other treatment of no avail, gave a 

 purely symptomatic aim to the whole plan of 

 treatment. The principle of this method is 

 that no true progress in therapeutics can be 

 made if more than one drug is employed, since 

 a favorable result can be attributed to no sin- 

 gle drug so that only a single drug is to be 

 administered for a single intention. Where no 

 definite therapeutic indication can be observed 

 no drug is to be used. This is the modern jus- 

 tification of " expectant " treatment. But dis- 

 ease is seldom a single pathological condition, 

 with a single essential symptom, which a sin- 

 gle remedy can relieve. The latest tendency 

 in therapeutics is to revert cautiously and par- 

 tially to the combination of remedies, still fol- 

 lowing pathological indications, but not sub- 

 mitting the whole plan of treatment to a single 

 dominant symptom ; and this tendency may be 

 plausibly referred to the more constructive or 

 synthetic mood which seems of late to have 

 come over medicine. It may be illustrated 

 in the modern treatment of consumption, in 

 which, in place of the sedative treatment that 

 sent sufferers to a moist, relaxing climate, a 

 stimulating and bracing plan of open-air life 

 has been adopted. The former method was 



