708 



SCIENCE 



[3Sr. S.,ToL. XLII. No. 1090 



Number vaccinated 1,656 



Died after vaccination 233 



Per cent, of loss 19 



That is the conservative statement of the 

 report. There should actually be deducted 

 the 123 sick when vaccinated, for vaccina- 

 tion does not help those aleady sick v^ith 

 the disease. That reduces the percentage 

 to 15 as compared with 40 to 80 per cent, 

 when unvaccinated. 



Now the vaccine can not be prepared 

 without operation on living animals; and 

 the method and the underlying idea could 

 never have been reached except through 

 animal experimentation. 



This may serve as a near-by example of 

 what is done and as a forecast of what will 

 be done for the animals themselves. The 

 very beginning of Pasteur's famous work 

 was for the conservation of animal health. 

 To this really great end none of the oppo- 

 nents of vivisection has contributed an iota. 



2. It is afSrmed by most antivivisection- 

 ists that experiments on animals are useless 

 in that no knowledge of any real value has 

 ever been attained in that way. This atti- 

 tude is well illustrated in a recent circular 

 entitled "Claim Everything" issued by the 

 American Antivivisection Society. This 

 circular is intended to be a rebuttal to an 

 article by Dr. W. W. Keen in the Scientific 

 American of June 20, 1914. The state- 

 ments in the circular are on the authority of 

 the president of the British Union for the 

 Abolition of Vivisection. The circular says, 



Brain surgery owes notMng to animal experi- 

 mentation. In brain, above all, the animal differs 

 from man. 



This appeals to a multitude of voters 

 who do not know that motor localization 

 was discovered by Fritsch and Hitzig on 

 the brain of a dog. Dr. Keen had referred 

 to the new and highly successful methods 

 of direct transfusion of blood. The circular 

 stjaxes, 



The direct transfusion of blood needs no ex- 

 periments with animals, nor is the operation itself 

 necessary. 



The curious psychological twist in the 

 reasoning of the opponents of progress in 

 scientific medicine is shown in the follow- 

 ing quotations from the same circular, 

 copied verbatim, except that to save the 

 space of comment I have inserted the 

 italics : 



Operations for goiter, again, depend upon the 

 aseptic treatment. 



Diphtheria has been reduced solely by sanitary 

 measures. 



Malaria has been abolished by sanitation. 



Yellow fever can not have been abolished by 

 any means based on experiments on animals, be- 

 cause the germ has never teen found to experi- 

 ment with. 



Discovery of salvarsan. This had better never 

 have been made. 



Every one familiar with the history of 

 hygiene and sanitation knows how much of 

 our knowledge and our point of view has 

 been obtained through experiments on ani- 

 mals. Prohibit animal experimentation and 

 progress in hygiene and sanitation would be 

 practically brought to a standstill. Yet the 

 opponents of research reiterate the state- 

 ment that hygiene and not experimentation 

 has enabled us to advance, and hence that 

 experimentation is useless. Where a for- 

 ward step has been made which is not attrib- 

 utable to "hygiene," as in the case of direct 

 blood transfusion, its usefulness is flatly 

 denied. 



In most literature of this kind you wUl 

 find expressed or implied a denial of the 

 whole range of scientific knowledge as to 

 the relation of microbes to disease. They 

 refer to serums, vaccines and antitoxins in 

 terms of profound contempt. A favorite 

 expression is one which I have heard used 

 by a California legislator, who calls vaccine 

 "rotten animal pus" and who would make 

 it a criminal offense to introduce any vac- 

 cine into the human system. 



