THE TEACHING OF PRACTICAL SURGERY. 
873 
served the purposes of teaching, and patients of commercial 
value affected with a malady which it is desired to cure or alle¬ 
viate, or a sound animal which it is desired to in some way mod¬ 
ify to better serve the uses or whims of man. 
Operations by the student upon comparatively worthless 
subjects are of very great value in surgical teaching, especially 
when carried out methodically as by Prof. Cadiot at Alfort. 
Here the student is brought into direct contact with nearly all 
the conditions of actual practice, the technique and methods can 
be effectively taught, he acquires tactile education, enabling 
him to recognize various organs by touch and to distinguish in 
the same manner diseased from healthy tissues or organs, he 
acquires actual experience in the control of haemorrhage, in the 
guidance of the hand, and the resistance offered by various tis¬ 
sues to the knife or other instrument. In many operations like 
neurectomy all essential educational conditions are present. 
The chief objections which can be urged against this method 
of teaching are: 
ist. Its cruelty. 
2d. Its failure to acquaint the student with pathological 
conditions. 
3d. It fails to awaken that enthusiasm on the part of the 
student which is essential to the highest effort. 
Perhaps the most serious of these is the contention that it is 
cruel. This may or not be and the cruelty may be material or 
immaterial. 
In the Alfort surgical exercises the subject is operated upon 
under complete general anaesthesia, and destroyed during the 
period of insensibility. Under these conditions we fail to see 
any cruelty. We take worn-out animals, perhaps buy them 
from the harness and goad, where their lives have for a long 
time been an unending period of suffering, with harsh driver, 
insufficient food, insalubrious stable, death or an asylum for 
aged horses the only source of escape from pain and suffering. 
In most cases death comes slowly and has been well advanced 
before the application of the goad ceases, but by such a system 
