Some of his demonstrations were doubtless unproductive of pain, but in view of the fact that in other experiments no anaesthetic was employed, it may be questioned whether his second "rule" was always very strictly observed. In one lecture he referred to his demonstration "as the first time that we have applied electrical stimulus to a nerve," and explains that when the experiment is made on an animal paralyzed with curare, the effect is more complicated when a sensory nerve is irritated, since then "the arteries all over the body contract, because the brain is in action."[1] No plainer confession of the existence of sensibility could be made, yet for obvious reasons the lecturer carefully avoids admitting the presence of pain. During the following year there appeared articles describing "the teaching of practical physiology in the London schools." At King's College in London, for example, demonstrations were made by the lecturer, but "experiments on animals are never given to the ordinary student to do; Professor Rutherford's experience on this point is that such attempts result only in total failure."[2] On the other hand, at University College, the Continental method of teaching was to be found. "Student perform experiments on animals. Frogs, curarized or chloroformed, are given them, and the experiment which has been fully explained and demonstrated by the professor, is performed by them as far as practicable."[3] Here, then, we find introduced into England (and perhaps there existing in secret for some time before), that vivisection of animals in illustration of well-known facts, which, but a few years earlier, every leading medical journal of Great Britain had so emphatically reprobated and denounced.
[1] Medical Times and Gazette, June 17, 1871. [2] Ibid., July 20, 1872. [3] Medical Times and Gazette, July 27, 1872.
The Continental school of English physiologists seemed confident of victory. But the leading exponents of English ideals in medicine were not inclined to surrender at once; now and then we find them vigorously maintaining their ground, and disposed to contrast the science gained in the laboratory with that gathered by experience and fortified by reflection. Some extracts from a leading editorial in the Medical Times and Gazette are extremely suggestive of the conflict of opinions:
"The relation of physiology to practical medicine is a subject which has been brought prominently into notice by the address of Dr. Burdon Sanderson … at the recent meeting of the British Association. That address may be considered as the first authoritative and public announcement made in this country that IT IS THE AIM AND INTENTION OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF THOUGHT and work to separate themselves more and more from the school of practical medicine; no longer to consider themselves auxiliary to it except as other sciences—for instance, chemistry and botany—may be considered auxiliary to it, but to win a place in the public estimation for their science as one which shall be cultivated FOR ITS OWN SAKE…
"The teaching of experience is more reliable than physiological theories and opinions…. The history of the advance of the cure of disease is in the history of empiricism, in the best sense of that much-abused word. The history of retrogression in the art of curing disease is that of the so-called Physiological Schools of Medicine… Physiological theory, based on experiments on dogs, wishes us to believe that mercury does not excite a flow of bile; but here the common sense of the Profession, educated by experience, has refused to be led by physiological theory…. Modern physiological science has taught us little more than the necessity of pure air, water, and food, good clothing and shelter, moderation in eating and drinking, and regulation of the passions—things, in fact, which are as old as the Pentateuch. We may safely assert that all the experiments made on luckless animals since the time of Magendie to the present, in France, America, Germany, and England, have not prolonged one tithe of human life, or diminished one tithe of the human suffering that have been prolonged and diminished by the discovery and use of Jesuits' bark and cod-liver oil."[1]
[1] Medical Times and Gazette (Editorial), September 7, 1872.
Early the next year (1873) was published the "Handbook of the Physiological Laboratory," compiled by leading men of the physiological party, among whom were Professors Sanderson, Foster, and Klein. Describing the method of performing various experiments upon animals, it included a particular account of some of the most excruciatingly painful of the vivisections practised abroad. So atrocious was one of the experiments thus described in this handbook for students that Professor Michael Foster, who wrote the description, afterward confessed that he had never seen or performed the experiment himself, partly "from horror of the pain." Reviewing the work, a medical journal justly declared that "the publication of this book marks an era in the history of physiology in England…. It shows THE PREDOMINANT INFLUENCE WHICH GERMANY NOW EXERCISES IN THIS DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE."[1] A professor of physiology, Dr. Gamgee, about the same time, refers to the physiological laboratories of Edinburgh, Cambridge, and London, and the part they sustained "in what I may call the Revival of the study of experimental physiology in England."[2]
[1] Medical Times and Gazette, London, March 29, 1873. [2] Ibid., October 18, 1873.
Emboldened by continuing success, the advocates of Continental vivisection in England determined to advance yet another step. The annual meeting of the British Medical Association for 1874 was to be held that year in August in the city of Norwich. A French vivisector, Dr. Magnan, was invited to be present, and to perform in the presence of English medical men certain experiments upon dogs. On this occasion, however, the public demonstration of French methods of vivisection did not pass without protest; there was a scene; some of the physicians present—among them Dr. Tufnell, the President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, and Dr. Haughton of the medical school in Dublin, denounced the experiments at the time they were made as unjustifiably cruel. Public attention was beginning to be aroused; it was decided to test the question, whether such exhibitions were protected by English law, and a prosecution was instituted against some who had assisted in performing the experiments. Dr. Tufnell appeared to testify in regard to the cruelty of the exhibition, and Sir William Fergusson, surgeon to the Queen, who had only just retired from the presidency of the British Medical Association, not only stigmatized one of the experiments as "an act of cruelty," but declared that "such experiments would not be of the smallest possible benefit."[1] The magistrates decided that while the case was a very proper one to prosecute, yet the gentlemen named as defendants were not sufficiently proven to have taken part in the experiment. The decision was not unjust; the real offender was safe in his native land.
[1] British Medical Journal, December 12, 1874.