10 INTRODUCTION 



Even more important, if anything, than ability to grow para- 

 sites on artificial cultures in order to experiment with them, is 

 ability to transplant them into animals which can be experi- 

 mented on. Only by wholesale animal experimentation, car- 

 ried on patiently and persistently, for years sometimes, could 

 many of the great medical victories of the past 25 years have 

 been won. To quote from MacNeal, " The importance of ex- 

 perimentation upon animals in the development of-our knowledge 

 concerning disease-producing microorganisms can hardly be 

 over-estimated. . . . Only in this way (by the use of animals 

 in considerable numbers) has it been possible to discover the 

 causal relation of bacteria to disease, and the way in which 

 diseases are transmitted. . . . The inoculation of animals also 

 provides accurately controlled material for studying the course 

 and termination of the disease as well as the gross or microscopic 

 lesions produced by it." One can hardly help feeling bitter 

 against those well-meaning but misguided individuals who 

 publicly denounce and endeavor to minimize the unselfish and 

 tireless labors of scientists who have made possible the allevi- 

 ation and prevention of so much human misery and suffering. 

 To quote from Dr. W. W. Keen in speaking of the results of 

 Dr. Flexner's experiments on monkeys and guinea-pigs with one 

 of the most deadly human diseases, cerebrospinal meningitis: 

 " which was the more cruel, Dr. Flexner and his assistants who 

 operated on 25 monkeys and 100 guinea-pigs with the pure and 

 holy purpose of finding an antidote to a deadly disease and with 

 the result of saving hundreds, and in the future thousands on 

 thousands of human lives; or the women who were 'fanned 

 into fury ' in their opposition to all experiments on living animals 

 at the Rockefeller Institute ' no matter how great the antici- 

 pated benefit? ' 



"If these misguided women had had their way, they would have 

 nailed up the doors of the Rockefeller Institute, would have pre- 

 vented these experiments on one hundred and twenty-five animals, 

 and by doing so would have ruthlessly condemned to death for 

 all future time five hundred human beings in every one thousand 

 attacked by cerebrospinal meningitis! 



"If your son or daughter falls ill with the disease, to whom 

 will you turn for help — to Flexner or to the anti-vivisec- 

 tionists?" 



