i88o.] 
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NOTES. 
The Benefits of Vivisection .— The “ Popular Science Monthly” 
gives a neat summary of Dr. Charles Richet’s arguments in 
defence of vivisection. He demands that it shall be judged by 
its practical results, and claims that if it can be shown that we 
have gained by this method of experiment the means of curing 
one or two diseases of man it must be considered legitimate. 
He cites a number of discoveries made through vivisection. 
Among them is the discovery of the circulation of the blood. 
“ Galen established the fact that the arteries contained blood by 
observations in the artery of a living animal ; Harvey opened 
the chests of living animals, cut into the pericardium, observed 
the contraction of the heart, and what was going on in the veins 
and arteries, and deduced from what he saw his theory of the 
circulation. Transfusion of blood, an operation resorted to in 
extreme cases with the best results in saving life, was introduced 
after its possibility had been ascertained from experiments upon 
animals first made in 1664 by Lower, and afterwards by Denis. 
‘ Experiment alone,’ Dr. Kichet says, ‘ will teach us precisely 
what quantity of blood is necessary and what is harmful ; and if 
over-sensitiveness forbids animal suffering for this end, then the 
experiments would have to be made on human beings. The 
mode of death from the inhalation of carbonic oxide, and cor- 
relatively, the method of avoiding or preventing . death from 
inhalation, have been made known only through vivisection. So 
also ‘ all that we know in hygiene of the quantity of air neces- 
sary to support life is the result of experiments on dogs and 
rabbits. Sometimes a precise knowledge of the conditions of 
respiration has served to prevent men from perishing.’. Only 
two methods exist by which we may learn the conditions of 
gastric digestion and collect its secretion, viz., by observation of 
gastric fistula produced by chance in man, and by artificial 
fistulze in animals. The first method has been possible only in 
three or four instances, but the effect of food on the gastric 
secretion in dogs and cats has been largely observed ; and the 
knowledge of the remedies which have been applied to the relief 
of dyspepsia has been derived from such studies. Our know- 
ledge of nutrition has been largely added to by means of experi- 
ments in which dogs and cats have been submitted to varied 
alimentation, and from which the quantity and quality of food 
necessary to sustain life have been deduced. What we know of 
the nerves has been gained from studies of animals, as have also 
the means of relieving neuralgias and paralysis, in which, thanks 
