VIVISECTION. 683 



cal results or theories, it has not seldom happened that the remedies", 

 though useful, have been given for a wrong reason, or have done 

 good in a way which was not expected. 



But if we look upon the medical profession as a body of men, 

 cunning to detect the nature and to forecast the issues of the bodily 

 ills under which we suffer, skillful in the use of means to avoid or to 

 lessen those ills, rich in resources whereby pain is diminished and 

 dangerous maladies artfully guided to a happy end, then we owe 

 physiology many and great debts. Did the reader ever suffer, or 

 witness others suffer, with subsequent relief, a severe surgical opera- 

 tion ? If so, let him revere the name of John Hunter, the father of 

 modern surgery. But Hunter was emphatically a physiologist ; his 

 surgery was but the carrying into practice of physiological ideas, 

 many of which were got by experiments on living animals. Does the 

 reader know that in all great surgical operations there are moments 

 of imminent danger lest life steal away in gushes of blood from the 

 divided vessels, danger now securely met by ligatures scientifically 

 and deftly tied ? Does he know that there was a time when the dan- 

 ger was imperfectly met by hot searing-irons and other rude means, 

 and that the introduction of ligatures, with their proper application, 

 is due to experiments, cruel experiments, if you like, on dogs and 

 other dumb animals, experiments eminently physiological in their na- 

 ture, about which much may be read in the book of " Jones on Haem- 

 orrhage ? " Even now, year by year, the scientific surgeon, by experi- 

 ments on animals, is at once adding to physiological knowledge and 

 bettering his treatment of wounded or diseased arteries. Has the 

 reader seen any one once stricken by paralysis, or bowed down by 

 some nervous malady, yet afterward made whole and brought back to 

 fair, if not vigorous, health ? The advice which turned such a one 

 toward recovery was based on knowledge originally drawn from the 

 vivisectional experiments of physiologists, and made safe by matured 

 experience. Or has he watched any dear friend fading away in that 

 terrible malady diabetes, after rejoicing that for a season he seemed 

 to be gathering strength and ceasing to fail, even if not regaining 

 health ? The only gleam of light into that mysterious disease which 

 we possess, came from the vivisectional researches of Claude Bernard 

 on the formation of glycogen in the liver ; and by judiciously acting 

 upon the results of those researches the skillful physician can some- 

 times stay its ravages. He cannot cure it even now ; and unless 

 some empiric remedy be found by chance, will never cure it, until, 

 by the death of many animals in the physiological laboratory, the 

 mystery of the glycogenic function of the liver be cleared up. 



But why need I go on adding one special benefit to another? They 

 may all be summed up in one sentence, which embodies the whole re- 

 lation of physiology to the medical profession. 



The art of medicine is the science of physiology applied to detailed 



