550 



NATURE 



\Augiist II", 1 88 1 



Had we this one example alone it would be sufficient to prove 

 lirilliantly the utility, yea, the indispensability, of vivisection. 

 Never has a dogma firmly established by the tradition of centuries 

 and every kind of authority, which in truth formed the central 

 point of a powerful and generally acknowledged system, been 

 annihilated with such a headlong downfall. In complete recog- 

 nition of the importance of such a man, Albert von Haller said 

 that Harvey's name was the second in medicine, that of Hippo- 

 crates being the first. But it was a difficult step, to advance a 

 new and unheard-of doctrine which interfered with science in so 

 revjlvitionary a manner. Having hesitated long whether he 

 should publih his discovery, and when he at last carried his 

 resolution into effect, the great vivisector cried: " Utcumque 

 sit, jam jacta est alea, spes mea in amantium veritatis et doc- 

 torum animorum caudore sita" {he. cit. p. Si). 



It is certainly due, even in the present day, to the purity of a 

 truth-loving and cultivated mind, to exonerate Harvey from the 

 reiiroach of hearllessness, perhaps of brutality, of which our 

 anti-vivisectionists are so lilDeral. His new knowledge had cost 

 the lives of many animals ; he starteil, as he himself says, "ex 

 vivorum (experiendi causa) dissectione, arteriarium apertione 

 disquisitionaeque muUimoda." And yet that was the least thing 

 with which he was reproached ; even kings at that time were so 

 little tender-hearted, or, I may say, with an opponent, were so 

 brutalised, that King Charles I. found pleasure in seeing the 

 experiments of his body-physician. 



On the other hand, after Malpighi had, still in the same 

 century, demonstrated the flow of blood in the capillaries of 

 living animals, and after our centnry has added the knowledge 

 of the existence of an actual capillary wall, the doctrine o' the 

 circulation apf ears so self-evident, it has so thoroughly entered 

 into the ideas of all, that it already requires a peculiarly-trained 

 mind to comprehend the opinion of the older physicians on tlie 

 local relations of the current of the blood. Whoever goes un- 

 prepared to the study of the medical classics, falls from one 

 misunderstanding into am ther. The ideas of the nature of local 

 processes are entirely changed, and yet the circulation, the 

 capillary certainly more than that of the larger vessels, stands in 

 the foreground of pathological interest almost more than in trufli 

 it should. The widely comprehensive doctrine of inflammation 

 and new groM tb, within which nearly the greater part of 

 practical cases occur, was founded on experiments on the capil- 

 lary circulation ; not less so was the doctrine of the cure of local 

 aiseased processes of most varied kinds. 



Even the worst opponents of vivisection recognise Harvey's 

 services. But, say they, since then, nothing more of importance 

 has been accomplished by vivisection. They do not know that 

 it is precisely that department of the doctrine of the process of 

 the circulation which embraces the vital properties of the organs 

 of circulation, which is entirely unmentioned by Harvey. 



On what does the activity of the heart depend? What in- 

 fluence do the vessels exert on the propulsion and distribution of 

 the blood? What share falls to the arleries, what to the veins, 

 VI hat to the capillaries ? All these questions are of the highest 

 practical importance, and none of them can be investigated 

 otherwise than by experiments on animals. But Harvey cuuM 

 not attack these quesiions, because in his time minute anatomy 

 was not yet developed. Who knew anything of the nerves of 

 Uie heart, or of the vessels? Who had any notion as to the 

 p.irticipation in the manifestations of the action of the heart and 

 blood-vessels, on the part of the nerves, which supply the parietal 

 structures, especially the fine muscles ? 



An interval of two centuries again intervened before Edward 

 Weber, by experiment on the vagus nerve in a living aniuial, 

 first revealed the mystery of the innervation of the heart ; ami 

 this, again, in a quite unexpected aiid unprecedented manner ; 

 and before our now so much almsed friend Claude Bernan like- 

 wise showed on a living animal the influence of the sympathetic 

 nerve on the vessels of the head and neck. 



Now for the first time, and through numerous other experi- 

 ments which have tended to this end, we understand the circula- 

 tion in its special characters. The pulse, that so highly treasured 

 object of the old .symptomatoligy, allows itself to be interpreted. 

 It is to us no longer the sign ol this or that disease, but the sign 

 of the existence or non-existenc^ of certain activities, of strength 

 or weakness, of irritation or relaxation of certain tissues. Now 

 fur the fir^t lime we can understaiid in its individual peculiarities 

 the action of the heart itsell and the oper.ation on it of certain 

 suhsaiices — e.g. cardiac poi^sons ; and it is not almost alone the 

 department oi diseases of the valves, to which alone, and with a 



scorn that cannot be rightly understood, the anti-vivisectors 

 point on account of their incurability, but also "the department 

 of febrile diseases, \\ hich we are in a position to survey as well 

 with regard to their symptoms as to their nature and their 

 results. 



The length of the interval of time between Harvey and the 

 more recent experimenters on the innervation of the vascular 

 apparatus is explained by the circumstance that in that inter- 

 mediate time two entirely new studies had to be created, to both 

 of H hich the discovery of the circulation was an impulse and a 

 preliminary condition. I mean physiology and general patho- 

 logy ; thus, indeed, both these studies, which are to be regarded 

 as the chief sui port of the experimental method, and which it 

 was originally the custom to comprise under the name of " Insti- 

 tutiones Medicte." Hermann Boerhaave had, in his professor- 

 ship, combined them, and, indeed, had even united them with 

 practical medicine ; under his pupils the division of labour com- 

 menced, and the formal separation of the studies. Haller was 

 the special creator of physiology. His experiments went first in 

 the direction of exploring the vital properties of individual parts 

 of the body, of single tissues, as would now be said. Among 

 these properties, following the distinguished Glisson, a man, it 

 seems to me, not even now suflSciently honoured in his country, 

 he assigned a prominent place to irritability. It would lead me 

 too far if I in this place desired to attempt to show forth indi- 

 vidually these memorable researches, the comprehension of nhich 

 was rendered extremely difficult by the then not yet .sufficiently 

 complete explanation of the motions "irritability" and "con- 

 tractility." For our purpose it is sufficient to point out that here 

 for the first time nerve and muscle, the two most highly developed 

 and thereby most energetic portions of the animal body, were 

 made the subjects of experiment with regard to their special 

 forms of activity. Contraction and sensibility appear as the 

 special signs of living activity. Therewith the question of the 

 basis of living activity was so nearly approached that Gaubius, 

 \\\\o at the same time laid the foundations of general pathology, 

 indicated the vital force as the source of contraction, without 

 going further.' 



From these beginnings was developed, at first in a very obscure 

 and equally unprofitable manner, especially clcuded by specu- 

 lative vitalism, the doctrine of life in its modern form. It has 

 required much longer labours, mostly experimental, to arrive at 

 a great and practical result in spite of all deviations. Kr<im the 

 conception of irritability, originally created by Glisson, that of 

 contractility has gradually become separate : and the contrast in 

 which Haller placed irritability and sensibility with re^-ard to 

 each other has been dissolved, by the fact that contractility and 

 sensibility are regarded as two special forms of expression of life 

 connected with various elements, and are subordinated to irri- 

 tability as the general expression. In this sense, irritability and 

 vitality are nearly identical. Both are properties of tissue, and 

 as such directly or indirectly accessible to treatment and ex- 

 periment. 



In fact, experimentation is now rather directed to the tissue 

 itself. Galvani's discovery of electric contractions, the labours 

 of Alexander von Humboldt on irritated muscle and nerve-fibre, 

 and many other contemporaneous researches, afford evidence of 

 the changed direction in which the new biology laboured. More 

 and more sank down the mysticism of the spirits of life and of 

 disease, the speculation as to an individual vital force ; and from 

 generation to generation medicine assumed more and more the 

 character of a real natural science. The obscurity which had 

 dominated especially the nervous system, disappeared under the 

 common labours of anatomists and experimenters ; and especially 

 since Charles Bell taught the difference of the nerves hitherto 

 considered as similar in nature, and thereby opened the road to 

 research on the special importance and power of the single divi- 

 .'inns of the central nervous system, one work after another has 

 appeared, which has diffused new light on this difficult and 

 complicated subject. It is impossible to go through all these 

 works on this occasion, and it would be superfluous in an 

 assembly of such accnmplished men, many of whom have them- 

 selves laboured in this glorious work. 



I will now only briefly point out that among these labours a 

 constantly clearer and more triumphant idea has advanced, which 

 in its beginnings reaches far back into past time — namely, the 

 idea of the proper life {vila propria) of the tissues. Every new 

 form of experiment which is devised renders new parts accessible 



' Gaubius. " Institut. Path. Med.," p. 71. " Vis vitalis solidi est, qua illud 

 ad contactum irritamenti se contraliit." 



