BROOKLYN,
May 31, 1901.
[1] No advocate of unrestricted experimentation, so far as known, has ever dared to print the full details of this Goltz experiment.
In the only essay to which Professor Bowditch has called attention, the statement had been corrected; the fact that an allusion of five or six words in an earlier essay gave an erroneous suggestion, was quite overlooked. But Dr. Keen will have it that there was a "REVISED" edition, and that in this "A DESCRIPTION OF THIS SAME OPERATION" was given.
There are here two misstatements. There is not the slightest reason for calling it a "revised" edition. Was there a "description given"? Let us quote the entire passage, written nearly a quarter of a century ago, in order to see what Dr. Keen ventured to call a "description of this same operation."
"We are almost at the beginning of the twentieth century. Civilization is about to enter a new era, with new problems to solve, new dangers to confront, new hopes to realize. It is useless to deny the increasing ascendancy of that spirit, which in regard to the problems of the Universe, affirms nothing, denies nothing, but continues its search for solution; it is equally useless to shut our eyes to the influence of this spirit upon those beliefs which for many ages have anchored human conduct to ethical ideals. Regret would be futile; and here, perhaps is no occasion for regret. To the new spirit, which perhaps is to dominate the future, this longing for truth, not for what she gives us in the profit that the ledgers reckon, but for what she is herself—this high ambition to solve the mysteries that perplex and elude us, the world may yet owe discoveries that shall revolutionize existence, and make the coming era infinitely more glorious in beneficent achievement than the one whose final record History is so soon to end.
"But all real progress in civilization depends upon man's ethical ideals…. What shape and tendency are these hopes and ambitions to assume in coming years? What are the ideals held up before American students in American colleges? What are the names whose mention is to fire youth with enthusiasm, with longing for like achievement and similar success? Is it Richet, `bending over palpitating entrails, surrounded by groaning creatures,' not, as he tells us, with any thought of benefit to mankind, but simply `to seek out a new fact, to verify a disputed point?' Is it Mantegazza, watching day by day, `con multo amore e patience moltissima,'—with much patience and pleasure— the agonies of his crucified animals? Is it Brown-Sequard, ending a long life devoted to the torment of living things with the investion of a nostrum that earned him nothing but contempt? Is it Goltz of Strasburg, noting with wonder that mother love and yearning solicitude could be shown even by a dying animal, whose breasts he had cut off, and whose spinal cord he had severed? Is it Magendie, operating for cataract and plunging the needle to the bottom of the patient's eye, that by experiment upon a human being he might see the effect of irritating the retina? … Surely, in these names, and such as these, there can be no uplift or inspiration to young men toward that unselfish service and earnest work which alone shall help toward the amelioration of the world."
In this passage, there is an allusion of JUST SIX WORDS to one phase of experimentation which was subsequently found to be inaccurate, and corrected, as Dr. Keen has shown. But was it in accord with truth to refer to this passing reference as "A DESCRIPTION of the same operation"? No reader of Dr. Keen's pages would be likely to investigate the statement. Was it fair to permit his readers to understand that a DESCRIPTION EXISTED, WHERE THERE WAS NONE?
There is yet another point to be noted. Referring to the experiments of Goltz, the impression seems to be given that not only was ablation of the breast mistakenly ascribed to the Strasburg vivisector, but that such a vivisection was imaginary: "NO SUCH OPERATION WAS EVER DONE." This is also untrue. Experiments of the kind have been done by other vivisectors, and they are recorded in their own reports. For example, de Sinety of Paris tells us in his "Manuel Pratique de Gynecologie" (Paris, 1879, p. 778), that upon female guinea-pigs, he had practised "l'ablation de ces glands pendant la lactation."[1] Another French vivisector, Dr. Paul Bert, states that he had not only performed "l'ablation des mamelles chez une femelle de cochon d'Inde," but that he had succeeded in performing the operation on a female goat. The poor creature recovered from the vivisection, and later, gave birth to a kid, which was placed with the mother. What would happen to a new-born animal placed at the side of a mother whose breasts had been cut off?
"Le petit, animal, voulant teter, et trouvant pas de mamelles, a donne de violent coups de te^te dans le re'gion mammaire…."[2]
[1] In a reference to de Sinety's vivisections at page 171, in the present volume, there is a slight mistake. Although de Sinety, as shown above, had practised the ablation of the mammary glands during lactation, it would seem that mutilation rather than complete ablation preceded his experiments on the innervation of the mammary nerve. The sentence should read "cut into the breasts," and not "removed the breasts." He tells us that he made a considerable number of experiments of the kind upon female guinea-pigs. In one of them, for example, he laid bare the nerve and isolated it with a thread,—"le nerf mammaire d'un co^te est mis a` nu, et isole," and that when the electric current was used, extreme pain,—"un douleur tre`s vivre" was excited, notwithstanding which the excitation was continued for ten minutes. (Gazette Me'd. de Paris, for 1879, p. 593). [2] Comptes Rendus de la Soc. de Biologie, Paris, 1883, p. 778.