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NATURE 



\August 1 1, 1881 



knowing that such an act of apparent charity would be real 

 cruelty to others. By putting out of sight for a moment 

 the fact that the number of beds in the hospitals is neces- 

 sarily limited, and admitting such a consumptive patient, 

 he would gratify his own feelings of kindness and bene- 

 volence, but would also exclude the young and strong 

 who suffer from such acute diseases as inflammation of the 

 heart, lungs, or kidneys, diseases which by proper care 

 and attention in the hospital might, and very probably 

 would, rapidly run a favourable course, and result in the 

 patient's restoration to his family in health and strength, 

 but which if left to themselves might damage the consti- 

 tution of the sufferer and make him a burden on society, 

 or quickly carry him off, leaving his wife a widow and his 

 children fatherless. Although the wistful look5 and 

 earnest entreaties of the consumptive patient might lead 

 some few morbidly sensitive and unreflecting persons to 

 open the gate of the hospital to him rather than to the 

 strongly-built and apathetic labourer whose life was in 

 hourly peril from acute disease, yet most people would, in 

 all probability, have little difficulty in deciding between 

 the two cases, were they to apply for admission at the 

 same time. But the case is different when the con- 

 sumptive is refused, not because the other is already 

 there, but because we know that in the ordinary course 

 of events he must needs come. Here we are forced to 

 disregard the promptings of sympathy with the case 

 before us, and to do that which gives us present pain in 

 order that we may achieve a higher though future good. 



Now what occurs daily in the treatment of patients 

 in hospitals, occurs also in the investigation of disease. 

 In order to prevent the suffering, misery, and death 

 of human beings, it is necessary that animals should 

 be sacrificed, and that we should not allow ourselves, 

 for the momentary gratification of those sentimental 

 feehngs which would lead us to avoid inflicting even 

 slight and transitory pain upon animals, to neglect 

 the acquirement of that knowledge which will be pro- 

 ductive of lasting and widespread benefit to mankind. 

 Many of those consumptive patients probably owe their 

 weary days, their sleepless nights, and their shortened 

 lives to popular experiments, experiments which have been 

 made upon them just as they might have been made upon 

 animals in the laboratory ; but they have been made for a 

 different purpose, for the purpose of gain — gain of money, 

 and not of knowledge. These patients may have been 

 supplied with milk from tubercular cows, because it was 

 more profitable for the owners of the dairy to continue 

 milking such animals than to destroy them. Such 

 popular experiments may be carried on for many years 

 without leading to any knowledge of their results, because 

 the conditions under which their subjects live are so com- 

 plex that it is very hard to ascertain which one of them is 

 the cause of disease. And all this time the unfortunate 

 sufferers from such experiments are suffering and dying for 

 lack of the knowledge which might be acquired by a few 

 experiments on animals in a laboratory. For in experiments 

 n the laboratory the conditions are much more simple, 

 and it is by such experiments on a small number of ani- 

 mals, instead of on an enormous number of human 

 beings, that it has been ascertained that the milk of 

 tuberculous animals is dangerous, and that the seeds of 

 tubercle may be sown in the organism by its use. By 



similar experiments on a small number of animals in the 

 laboratory we are now learning that many diseases are 

 due to minute organisms, which we can cultivate at will 

 under definite conditions, ascertaining their mode of 

 growth and the influences which modify it. By such 

 experiments M. Pasteur and others have found that these 

 organisms may have their virulence so modified that they 

 can be inoculated harmlessly, and that these inoculations 

 will protect the animal against the virulent form, just as 

 vaccination will protect against small-pox. It is only by 

 an accurate knowledge of the causes of disease that we 

 can hope to prevent its occurrence, and it is only by an 

 accurate knowledge of its nature and seat, and of the 

 action of drugs, that we can hope to cure it when it is 

 present. The seat of disease may be determined without 

 experiment upon animals, for, after the death of the 

 patient, a post-mortem examination will show what parts 

 of the body have been affected. But the alterations 

 which we find in the dead body are only the results of 

 disease. They are no more the disease itself than a field 

 strewn with slain is a battle. As Prof. Virchow remarks 

 in his address, disease presupposes life. In the dead 

 body there is no disease; with death, hfe and disease 

 disappear simultaneously. It is only in the living 

 body that we can investigate the process of disease, 

 and it is by experiments upon living animals that such 

 exact knowledge of disease as we already possess has 

 been acquired. Without the aid of experiment we are 

 able to ascertain even less regarding the action of drugs 

 than regarding disease, for the most powerful drugs will 

 profoundly alter all the functions of life, and may, indeed, 

 kill almost as rapidly as the lightning-flash, without 

 leaving any visible trace behind to guide us to the seat of 

 action. It is only by experiment upon living creatures 

 that we can ascertain the action of a drug. Formerly, 

 physicians were accustomed to make these experiments 

 upon their patients, "pouring," as Voltaire has said, 

 " drugs of which they knew little into bodies of vvhich 

 they knew less." Nor could they do otherwise. They 

 were called upon to render assistance to their patients, 

 and in their ignorance they did what they could ; but 

 instead of being guided by the lamp of knowledge, they 

 followed the ignis fatuus of their own imaginations. As 

 Prof. Fraser points out in his address before the Section 

 of Pharmacology, fanciful resemblances between medi- 

 cines and parts of the body, healthy or diseased, were 

 supposed to show the organs which the medicines par- 

 ticularly affected, and the diseases in which they would 

 be useful. For example, the white spots on the leaf of a 

 plant were supposed to indicate that it would be useful 

 in consumption, because in that disease white spots 

 are found in the lungs. The carrot was employed in 

 jaundice, because the plant and the patient were 

 alike — yellow ; and fruits were given in diseases of 

 the heart or kidneys for no better reason than that they 

 resembled these organs in shape. We now laugh at the 

 wildness of these fancies, but we are justified in doing so 

 only because they have been proved by experiment to be 

 foolish. The experiments which proved this have mostly 

 been made by giving drugs to large numbers of human 

 beings, patient after patient being treated in the same 

 way, until the inefficacy of the drug became so apparent 

 that its use was finally abandoned. But while physicians 



