May 7, 1914] 
mechanisms of circulation, respiration, digestion, 
and secretion; the functions of the liver, pancreas, 
and kidney;.the processes of metabolism, the 
causation of diabetes; the utility of the internally- 
secreting glands; the manner in which the organs 
of the body are governed and their functions 
regulated—none of these could have been eluci- 
dated nor could the knowledge which has been 
obtained have been applied to man from experi- 
ments upon animals other than dogs. The prohibi- 
tion of the employment of dogs for these investiga- 
tions would put a complete stop to the progress of 
physiology in Great Britain—which, in this par- 
ticular science, has, from the time of Harvey 
onwards, always held a peculiarly honourable 
position. It would put medicine in this country 
at an enormous disadvantage as compared with 
other countries; and our professors and students 
would have to go abroad to gain that practical 
knowledge of the functions of the body for the 
investigation of which the dog is the only animal 
available. For medicine is founded upon an exact 
knowledge of these functions: without it the 
physician gropes in the dark and works by guesses 
which are generally far removed from the actual 
truth. Moreover many diseases which are common 
to man and animals can only be fully investigated 
in an animal like the dog, unless man himself is 
to be made the subject of experiment. And it is 
scarcely necessary to point out even to our oppo- 
nents that the prohibition they demand would 
prevent any further investigation of the causation 
and treatment of diseases which are peculiar to 
the dog, so that the race they are professing to 
protect would ultimately suffer from such pro- 
hibition even more than mankind. 
The question really at issue is whether a know- 
ledge of the functions of the body in health and 
disease is to continue to be gained at the expense 
of a certaia number of stray and worthless dogs, 
which are in any case condemned by law to be 
destroyed, or at the expense of humanity. 
Nothing is more certain than that important 
branches of medical knowledge if not advanced by 
experiments on these animals can only be ad- 
vanced by taking toll of the lives of patients, who 
would be treated in ignorance of the conditions 
under which remedies should be applied and of 
the results which such remedies are likely to yield. 
It is difficult for a layman to understand the 
full bearing of this question, because he is unaware 
of the extent to which medical knowledge profits 
and has profited by experiments on animals. 
Some doctors even, mostly belonging to what is 
often spoken of as the “old school,’ are unin- 
formed regarding the manner in which their 
knowledge of the functions of the body and of the 
changes which are produced in disease has been 
acquired. It is, moreover, true that the ordinary 
practising physician does not himself make ex- 
periments upon animals: he has as a rule neither 
the time nor the opportunity. But however well- 
trained he may be, it is not the practitioner who 
advances our knowledge of medicine and surgery ; 
or if he does so it is at the expense of the patient 
NO. 2323, VOL. 93| 
NATURE 243 
upon whom he first makes a trial of the remedies 
by aid of which he hopes to cure the particular 
disease he is treating. There are, admittedly, 
operations which have been tried from the first 
upon the human subject and have ultimately 
resulted in singular success, so that cases which 
previously would have been relinquished as hope- 
less are in large numbers restored to health. But 
the toll of human lives required to achieve this 
success is lamentable. Surgeons who devise a 
new method of operation are in the habit of pub- 
lishing statistics regarding the cases which they 
have treated by it. An examination of such 
statistics always shows a relatively large per- 
centage of failures and death in the earlier cases, 
whilst that percentage is greatly reduced or even 
abolished in the later cases. This means that the 
earlier cases have partaken of the nature of ex- 
periments by the aid of which the technique of the 
method has been established. If this technique 
had been worked out in dog's the toll of human life 
required to arrive at the same degree of perfection 
would have been vastly less. 
There are, however, surgeons of the present 
day—and their number is likely to increase in the 
future—who consider it improper to acquire at the 
expense of their patients the technical knowledge 
necessary for the establishment of a new operative 
method and who would vvillingly resort to dog's for 
the purpose of obtaining such knowledge. This 
procedure can, however, be but rarely carried out 
in this country, because the anti-vivisectionist 
legislation of recent years places serious obstacles 
in its path. But in the United States, where a 
more enlightened view is taken of the position of 
mankind in relation to the lower animals, it is the 
recognised method of procedure, and is beginning 
to make itself felt in the extraordinary progress 
which the science and practice of surgery has 
made of late years in America. 
Sir Frederick Banbury has attempted to excite 
sympathy for his Bill by citing the case of a dog 
which had been operated on by an eminent Edin- 
burgh surgeon, with the object of testing a new 
method of inducing union of fractures of bone. 
Surely nothing could be more proper than that a 
new method should be first performed upon a dog 
rather than upon man. Does Sir Frederick Ban- 
bury think that it would have been right for the 
test to be first made upon a patient? Would he 
prefer to have an untried method applied to himself 
before it had been determined, by experiments 
upon dogs, whether it could be successfully per- 
formed or would be likely to yield a good result? 
I think the Edinburgh dog is an unfortunate in- 
stance for Sir Frederick to have selected. And 
I cannot, of course, expect him to see that the 
fact that the dog, which was bought in good faith 
from a known dealer in animals, happened to 
have been picked up in the street by the vendor, 
has nothing to do with the question whether it 
is or is not expedient to employ dog's for this and 
similar purposes. 
Sir Frederick Banbury is commonly believed to 
be impervious to argument and one can well 
