PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS OF DRUGS ON THE SECRETION OF BILE. 261 
VIGNAL and WitL1AmM J. Dopps, M.B., D.Sc., for their valuable assistance in 
the performance of the experiments, and for their company during the long and 
weary hours through which they daily extended. I have very cordially to 
thank the Scientific Grants Committee of the British Medical Association for 
having voted upwards of £200 from the funds of the Association to defray the 
very heavy expenses incurred for the materials for the research, and for their 
energetic and powerful support at a time when the clamour of blind ignorance 
and silly prejudice seriously menaced and almost arrested the progress of this 
research. Having personally devoted not less than 1400 hours of severe labour 
to the accomplishment of this work, and having (as, of course, every medical 
man thinks himself bound to do for the alleviation of suffering) communicated 
to all every fact calculated eventually to cure affections so common as those 
of the liver, it is, to say the least, ungrateful, that a certain section of the 
public should have rewarded our unselfish efforts to cure their hepatic 
derangements by a flood of abuse; because, like most of our medical brethren, 
we believe that to be penny-wise and pound-foolish as regards pain is a 
policy as short-sighted, as narrow-minded, and as reprehensible here as else- 
where. Though profuse with their ingratitude, I doubt not that one and all of 
them will be very ready and eager to profit by the results of our labour ; for I 
suspect that most of them are scarcely willing to refuse all medical aid, and to 
thus push their logic to its practical issue. Desiring, as I think most of them do, 
to continue in receipt of all the medical assistance they can obtain, it may 
possibly satisfy their conscientious scruples to vainly attempt to make it appear 
that nothing worth knowing in medicine has been learned from experiments on 
animals. It is not difficult, by misrepresentation and by a multiplicity of 
words, to deceive a public ignorant of the machinery of life and of the pro- 
cesses by which its movements are studied and remedies found for its disorders ; 
but they cannot thus deceive any moderately well informed and right-minded 
medical practitioner. The discourtesy, misrepresentation, and injustice that 
_ we have suffered at the hands of those who should have acted otherwise, has 
| not, however, induced us to prove false to the interests of suffering humanity. 
We are conscious of having faithfully done our utmost to advance the scientific 
treatment of diseases of the liver, and while steadily pursuing this great object 
we have been most careful to avoid the infliction of all pain that was not 
absolutely necessary. 
[ REFERENCES. 
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