CHAPTER XVI
RESEARCH WITHOUT VIVISECTION
No phase of modern science so closely touches the welfare of humanity as the studies which concern the prevention of disease. Up to a very recent period, well within the lifetime of many now living, practically the entire energy of the medical profession was given up to the treatment of human ailments, with an almost complete disregard of problems of prevention or studies of origin. To-day, in great measure, all this has been changed, and the importance of preventing disease has come well to the front. It is permissible to doubt whether the "cure" of any of the principal infectious diseases is likely to be so thoroughly accomplished as to eliminate it as a cause of mortality, and we may regard with greater promise attempts to discover the mysterious causes of our diseases, and the best methods by which their spread may be prevented. It is certainly a great gain that during the last hundred years mankind has learned that deliverance must come through human activity, and has ceased to regard typhoid or consumption as a dispensation of Providence.
For the conquest of some of the principal maladies affecting the human race at the present time I have long questioned whether the laboratory for experimentation upon animals offers the opportunity for the surest results. The average man has his attention fixed upon mysterious researches which are being carried on in this or that "Institute"; rumours of impending discoveries and almost certain cures are published far and wide; and gradually one gets the impression that notwithstanding abundant disappointments, it is only by yet more vivisection that the mystery will be solved. Is this a valid conclusion? In many cases, might not scientific research have a better chance to discover the secret of origin were it directed into other channels? I propose to suggest one method of scientific research with which vivisection is in no way concerned—an investigation into the cause of one of the most terrible and most threatening of human maladies—cancer, or malignant disease.
The subject is a vast one. Within the limits of a few pages it cannot be treated with any approach to the completeness which its importance demands. The utmost that can now be attempted is the suggestion of certain lines of research independent of animal experimentation, which, if carried out with completeness, might lead to results of incalculable benefit to humankind.
Outside the medical profession there are few who have the faintest realization of the facts pertaining to malignant disease. One reason for such ignorance is the lack of any organized system, in the United States, for recording the annual mortality. Except among barbarous or semi-civilized people, no such condition exists. When, during the autumn of 1912, Dr. Bashford, the Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund of England, was invited to lecture in New York, he confessed that he had tried in vain to obtain American statistics concerning cancer which might be compared to those of other nations; they simply did not exist. There are a few states and a few cities for which mortality records exist, but in some of the principle states of America there is no official record showing even the total number of deaths from murder, from accident, or disease. Once in ten years the Federal Government resents us the mortality report of the census year, but even here the information is not available until a considerable period after it is collated. There is, however, one nation whose official registers for many years have recorded the mortality from each cause of disease, for either sex, and for each ten-year period of life. These records have no equal elsewhere, and are only approached by the mortality records of the Empire of Japan. The figures concerning cancer upon which we may chiefly depend are those which pertain to the English people. There can be no doubts but that the mortality from cancer in America exhibits the same phenomena, though the rate may be higher.
The first thing to impress the student is the immensity of the tribute of mortality exacted by this disease, from those in the maturity of life, and in large measure at the period of greatest usefulness. During thirty years, from 1881 to 1910 inclusive, there perished in England and Wales from cancer no less than 703,239 lives. Figures like these, for the average intelligence, are practically incomprehensible; for this thirty-year tribute to malignant disease in a signle country represents more human being than all estimated to have perished on the battlefields of Europe for two hundred years. And if we were able to add the mortality from this one disease on the Continent of Europe, it might represent a total of several millions.
Another significant circumstance is the uniformity of the tribute exacted by cancer, year after year. We can see that best by taking the actual number of deaths from this cause, in a single country, and observing with what slow, implacable, and ever-increasing steps the great destroyer advances.