EXPERIMENT 133. "Bunsen's flame to the right paw…. In the control experiments, as well as this, THE DOG WAS NOT UNDER FULL ANAESTHESIA … THE ANIMAL STRUGGLED ON APPLICATION OF THE FLAME."
EXPERIMENT 5. "UNDER INCOMPLETE ANAESTHESIA, crushing of foot caused a very sharp rise, followed by an equally sharp decline of pressure. THIS WAS REPEATED SEVERAL TIMES. Under full anaesthesia crushing of paws caused rise again."
EXPERIMENT 4. "First, crushing of paw…. Second, crushed foot extensively, JUST BEFORE CORNEAL REFLEX WAS ABOLISHED."
To the average reader the last few words convey no definite meaning, but their significance is plain. Until the corneal reflex is abolished, the surgeon does not begin to operate, for sensibility remains. It is needless to quote further; even a single instance of incomplete anaesthesia, admitted by the vivisector himself, suffices to overturn the claim that the insensibility was complete in every case. "Words," says Bishop Butler, "mean what they do mean, and not other things"; and no amount of literary juggling can prove that whether the insensibility is complete or incomplete, the pain is precisely the same.
THIRD. CURARE AND MORPHIA, NEITHER OF WHICH IS AN ANAESTHETIC, WERE SOMETIMES USED IN THESE EXPERIMENTS, APPARENTLY TO PREVENT THE ANIMALS UNDERGOING VIVISECTION FROM MAKING ANY MOVEMENTS WHICH MIGHT DISTURB THE INSTRUMENTS EMPLOYED.
The use of CURARE rests upon the admission of the vivisector himself. After mentioning the employment of chloroform and ether, as before quoted, he adds: "In a few cases, CURARE and MORPHIA were used." Now, these drugs are not anaesthetics, and curare especially is only used when it is desired to keep the vivisected creature incapable of any movement—no matter what degree of torment it may be suffering. In his textbook on physiology, Professor Holmgren calls curare the "most cruel of poisons," because an animal under its influence "it changes instantly into a living corpse which hears and sees, and knows everything, but is unable to move a single muscle; and under its influence no creature can give the faintest indication of its hopeless condition." Dr. Starling, the professor of physiology at University College, London, states that when an animal has had an anaesthetic administered and also a dose of CURARE, if the anaesthetic passed off, the animal would be unable to move, or to show any sign of suffering.
Nor is morphia an anaesthetic. "So far from suppressing sensibility completely," says Claude Be'rnard in his lectures, "morphine sometimes seems to exaggerate it." An animal under its influence "FEELS THE PAIN, BUT HAS LOST THE IDEA OF DEFENDING HIMSELF."
We should have been very glad if the author had stated in his book the precise experiments in which curare and morphia were employed. We are told that the number was "few." But in comparison with the total number—146—how many may that phrase signify? Were there twenty? Possibly. It would seem that in every case after the preliminary administration of anaesthetics—the dog's throat was cut, so that artificial respiration could be easily maintained; "tracheotomy was performed," to use the scientific phraseology. This is done when curare is given, for then not the slightest movement of the tortured animal can disturb the delicate instruments which are attached to it. We may therefore assume that every case wherein only curare and morphia were used—how many there were we do not know—implied torment for the wretched victims.
Human beings are not submitted on the surgeons' table to operations of this character, prolonged for hours. If, in the interest of Science, some experimenter would place himself in like condition to that of the animals upon which he worked; if, under anaesthesia—complete or incomplete—he would permit a hand to be "crushed," a nerve trunk "stimulated," his feet placed in boiling water "for a considerable time," and a Bunsen's flame applied for two minutes to some part of his body—we might possibly learn whether the acutest pains inflicted could be absolutely suppressed. Perhaps he would survive to tell us; but the animal cannot speak. No assurances suffice to clear our doubts; assurances prove nothing. It may be, to use the words of a great surgeon, that "in this relation, there exists a case of cruelty to animals far transcending in its refinement and in its horror, anything that has been known in the history of nations."
Such are some of the reasons which induce doubt of the theory that all of the experiments of these vivisectors were conducted upon animals wholly insensible to painful impressions. To become the victim of the anaesthetic delusion regarding them is to justify; and to justify is to share responsibility. But this is not all. There would seem to be other evidence of the most convincing character, that some of the animals thus subjected for hours to the stimulation of nerves and to the most frightful mutilations were not at all times in such state of unconsciousness as to prevent the occurrence of one most significant indication of pain. It is proof to which the attention of the public, so far as known, has never yet been directed; and I propose to illustrate somewhat at length what has been done in the name of free and unlimited vivisection, not only during the closing years of the past century, but down almost to the present time.