This statement is a most remarkable one. The witness was once widely known as a ruthless experimenter upon living animals, and he was now defending the practice by an enumeration of its gains. Apparently, no member of the Commission questioned his evidence; the representative of the British Medical Association solemnly affirmed that as a result of vivisection certain diseases had so completely disappeared that present observation or description was impossible, and the Royal Commission accepted his word. The statement that these septic diseases had disappeared crossed the Atlantic, and nearly six years afterward, in the columns of a New York journal, it again appeared.[2] Yet the statement was untrue. It is indeed difficult to believe that any educated medical man in England or America could have read it without recognition of its untruth. Let us glance at the evidence.
[2] New York Times, July 28, 1912.
If it were true that the septic diseases which relate to blood- poisoning had really been so completely abolished that description of them were now impossible—as Sir Victor Horsley declared—it is evident that as causes of any part of English mortality they would cease to appear. The report of the Registrar-General of England and Wales tells a very different story. Sir Victor Horsley gave this testimony in November, 1907. During the five years preceding, and ending December 31, 1907, NO LESS THAN 2,933 PERSONS DIED FROM BLOOD- POISONING (PYAEMIA AND SEPTICAEMIA) IN ENGLAND AND WALES. During the year 1907, the year that testimony was given, the tribute of 604 lives was exacted by these diseases which had "GONE"! Even during the year following (1908), the recorded deaths due to blood-poisoning in England and Wales were 560; and yet the disease had been solemnly declared to be non-existent by the leading defender of English vivisection!
Nor is this all. In proportion to the total population the death-rate from blood-poisoning WAS HIGHER DURING THE YEAR THAT SIR VICTOR HORSLEY GAVE THIS ASTOUNDING TESTIMONY THAN IT WAS EVEN FORTY YEARS BEFORE. In 1868, in England and Wales, to a million persons living, the death-rate from septic diseases, or blood-poisoning, was fifteen; the year following it was sixteen. In 1870 it rose to eighteen, falling, however, to sixteen for the next two years. Nearly forty years go by, and we find a leading English vivisector assuring a Royal Commission that blood-poisoning had so completely disappeared that a medical writer could not describe it; and the Registrat-General charging this extinct disease with a death-rate of nineteen in 1906 and eighteen in 1907, A HIGHER RATE OF MORTALITY THAN A GENERATION BEFORE![1]
[1] For these statistics see reports of the Registrar-General of England and Wales, 54th Report, Table 16, and 73rd Report, Table 22.
These are officially stated facts. At the cost of half a crown Sir Victor Horsley might have learned that the diseases he so glibly declared had "gone" were still responsible for a part of English mortality, and a greater proportion even than during thirty-five to forty years before. It is this gross ignorance on the part of those who would teach us, this willingness in the defence of all phases of vivisection, to make assertions which are without foundation in fact, that justly tends to create distrust of every such statement, unsupported by proof. We are not questioning the value of asepsis, which is only a learned phrase to express absolute surgical cleanliness. The time may come when these septic forms of disease will entirely disappear. That day, however, has not yet arrived. Why declare that it is already here? Why proclaim that diseases had "GONE" which still existed, or that an enemy had been utterly exterminated which still was responsible for hundreds of deaths?
Nor are English medical writers alone guilty of blunders and exaggerations concerning the effect of experiments on animals. In the number of Harper's Monthly for April, 1909, to which we have referred, an American writer blunders quite as badly as his English confre`re. He tells us that "the friends of experimental research have almost completely abolished the dangers of maternity, reducing its death-rate FROM TEN OR MORE MOTHERS OUT OF EVERY HUNDRED, to less than one in every hundred."
A more ignorant statement was never put forth by an intelligent writer. Where are statistics to be found going to prove that among any people, in any land, at a ny time, 10 PER CENT. of all mothers giving birth to offspring perished from the accidents or diseases incident to child-birth? No such statistics can be produce, for the simple reason they do not exist. In the United States we have no official statistics of mortality covering the entire country or reported from year to year. England, however, has recorded the mortality of its people for over half a century. What support does it afford to the assertion that at any time one in every ten mothers, bringing children into the world, perished either from accident or disease? During a period of sixty-two years, from 1851 down to th epresent time, there was not a single year in which mortality of Englishwomen from septic diseases connected with child-birth EVER REACHED EVEN ONE IN A HUNDRED. But this is the figure for all England. Then take the forty-four counties into which England is divided, and from the downs of Devon to the slums of Lancashire, one cannot find a county in all England in which the mortality of mothers from diseases pertaining to child-birth has reached even a quarter of the ratio stated by this medical writer. "From all causes together NOT FOUR DEATHS IN A THOUSAND BIRTHS and miscarriages happened in England and Wales during the first year, seventy-five years ago, that official statistics were gathered; it was a death-rate of five in one thousand the following year."[1] We are not questioning the value of surgical cleanliness; we dispute only the justice of exaggerated and misleading statements concerning any fact capable of scientific demonstration. There can be no doubt that less than half a century ago, in the maternity wards of certain hospitals and in the experience of certain men, there was a death-rate from such ailments far above the average experience of the country; but it was solely due to the ignorance, the criminal blindness and obstinacy of certain men in the medical profession. But a little over seventy years ago, when Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out that this saddest place of mortality was due to want of care on the part of medical men, it was two professors in two of the largest medical schools of America who opposed him; it was Professor Charles Meigs, of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, who laughed to scorn his warnings, and held up to the ridicule of the medical profession the theories that are now accepted as facts. With such men as teachers of medical science, what wonder that for women about to become mothers certain hospitals of that day were little better than slaughter-houses, to enter which was to leave hope behind?[2] But the experience of such hospitals is not the basis upon which Science rests conclusions when they may be ascertained by reference to the statistics of a nation. The murder-rate of Philadelphia is not to be determined by that of one of its slum districts. If, a century ago, a slave-owner of Jamaica owning ten negroes, whipped one of them so severely that he died, should we be justified in declaring that in the West Indies the murder-rate of slaves was 10 per cent., or "ten in a hundred"? Its absurdity is manifest. When, therefore, a reputable writer for a magazine largely read by wives and mothers puts forth the statement that by reason of some experiments the death-rate of diseases incident to maternity has been reduced "from ten or more mothers out of every hundred," leaving it to be inferred that such rate of mortality was once general, what are we to infer concerning his ideals of scientific accuracy?
[1] "Medical Essays of Dr. O. W. Holmes," Boston, 1899, p. 156. [2] "Polk told us that when he graduated in medicine, delivery in a lying-in hospital was far more dangerous than an engagement in the bloodiest battle, for during his internship at Bellevue, he saw FORTY- FIVE WOMEN DIE OUT OF THE SIXTY WHO HAD BEEN DELIVERED DURING A SINGLE MONTH."—Williams; Jour. Am. Med. Association, June 6, 1914.
Equally mistaken is the implication conveyed by the passage quoted that some vast reduction of mortality has been accomplished in regard to this special form of disease. This belief is doubtless entertained by a majority of medical practitioners, accustomed to accept statements of leaders without investigation or questioning. But it is not true. We need to remember, as Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes tells us, "how kindly Nature deals with the parturient female, when she is not immersed in the virulent atmosphere of an impure lying-in hospital." To demonstrate the exact facts, I have tabulated all the deaths in England and Wales from diseases incident to child-birth, as compared with the number of children born, for sixty years from 1851 down to 1910. It will probably surprise many a medical practitioner to know that so far from having vastly diminished, the death-rate from diseases of this character in England and Wales WAS ACTUALLY LESS HALF A CENTURY AGO THAN IT WAS DURING THE TEN YEARS ENDING 1910. But the facts are beyond question; they not only rest upon the official reports of the Registrar-General, but they show a uniformity year after year which it is impossible to regard as due to chance. In England and Wales, during twenty years (1851-1870) the total number of births reported by the Registrar-General was 13,971,746. The total deaths from puerperal fever during the same period were 21,935—a mortality-rate per 100,000 births of 157. This was the period between forty and sixty years ago. During the ten years between 1901 and 1910, the births in England and Wales numbered 9,208,209; and the deaths from puerperal sepsis were 16,341, a mortality-rate per 100,000 births of 175—GREATER THAN THAT OF HALF A CENTURY AGO! The mortality- rate may now be going downward; it was in 1910 but 142 per 100,000 births, but in 1860 the corresponding death-rate was 140, and in 1861 it was 130—considerably less than at the present day.[1]