For myself, I believe no permanent or effective reform of present practices is probable until the Medical Profession generally concede as dangerous and unnecessary that freedom of unlimited experimentation in pain, which is claimed and practiced to-day. That legislative reform is otherwise unattainable, one would hesitate to affirm; but it assuredly would be vastly less effective. You must convince men of the justice and reasonableness of a law before you can secure a willing obedience. Yielding to none in loyalty to the science, and enthusiasm for the Art of Healing, what standpoint may be taken by those of the Medical Profession who desire to reform evils which confessedly exist?
I. We need not seek the total abolition of all experiments upon living animals. I do not forget that just such abolition is energetically demanded by a large number of earnest men and women, who have lost all faith in the possibility of restricting an abuse, if it be favored by scientific enthusiasm. "Let us take," they say, "the upright and conscientious ground of refusing all compromise with sin and evil, and maintaining our position unflinchingly, leave the rest to God."[1] This is almost precisely the ground taken by the Prohibitionists in national politics; it is the only ground one can occupy, provided the taking of a glass of wine, or the performance of any experiment,—painless or otherwise,—is of itself an "evil and a sin." There are those, however, who believe it possible to oppose and restrain intemperance by other methods than legislative prohibition. So with the prohibition of vivisection. Admitting the abuses of the practice, I cannot yet see that they are so intrinsic and essential as to make necessary the entire abolition of all physiological experiments whatsoever.
II. We may advocate (and I believe we should advocate)—the total abolition, by law, of all mutilating or destructive experiments upon lower animals, involving pain, when such experiments are made for the purpose of public or private demonstration of already known and accepted physiological facts.
This is the ground of compromise—unacceptable, as yet, to either party. Nevertheless it is asking simply for those limitations and restrictions which have always been conceded as prudent and fair by the medical profession of Great Britain. Speaking of a certain experiment upon the spinal nerves, Dr. M. Foster, of Cambridge University, one of the leading physiological teachers of England, says: "I have not performed it and have never seen it done," partly because of horror at the pain necessary. And yet this experiment has been performed before classes of young men and young women in the Medical Schools of this country! Absolutely no legal restriction here exists to the repetition, over and over again, of the most atrocious tortures of Mantegazza, Bert and Schiff.
This is the vivisection which does not "pay,"—even if we dismiss altogether from our calculation the interests of the animals sacrificed to the demand for mnemonic aid. For the great and perilous outcome of such methods will be—finally—an atrophy of the sense of sympathy for human suffering. It is seen to-day in certain hospitals in Europe. Can other result be expected to follow the deliberate infliction of prolonged pain without other object than to see or demonstrate what will happen therefrom? Will any assistance to memory, counterweigh the annihilation or benumbing of the instinct of pity?
Upon this subject of utility of painful experiments in class demonstrations or private study, I would like to appeal for judgment to the physician of the future, who then shall review the experience of the medical student of to-day. In his course of physiological training, he or she may be invited to see living animals cut and mutilated in various ways, eviscerated, poisoned, frozen, starved, and by ingenious devices of science subjected to the exhibition of pain. On the first occasion such a scene generally induces in the young man or young woman a significant subjective phenomenon of physiological interest; an involuntary, creeping, tremulous sense of horror emerges into consciousness,—and is speedily repressed. "This feeling," he whispers to himself, "is altogether unworthy the scientific spirit in which I am now to be educated; it needs to be subdued. The sight of this inarticulate agony, this prolonged anguish is not presented to me for amusement. I must steel myself to witness it, to assist in it, for the sake of the good I shall be helped thereby to accomplish, some day, for suffering humanity."
Praiseworthy sentiments, these are, indeed. Are they founded in reality? No. The student who thus conquers "squeamishness" will not see one fact thus demonstrated at the cost of pain which was unknown to science before; not one fact which he might not have been made to remember without this demonstrative illustration; not one fact—saddest truth of all—that is likely to be of the slightest practical service to him or to her in the multiplied and various duties of future professional life. Why, then, are they shown? To help him to remember his lesson! Admit the value to the student, but what of the cost?
In one of the great cities of China, I was shown, leaning against the high wall of the execution ground, a rude, wooden frame-work or cross, old, hacked, and smeared with recent blood-stains. It was used, I was told, in the punishment of extreme offenses; the criminal being bound thereto, and flayed and cut in every way human ingenuity could devise for inflicting torture before giving an immediately mortal wound. Only the week before, such an execution had taken place; the victim being a woman who had poisoned her husband. A young and enthusiastic physician whom I met, told me he had secured the privilege of being an eye witness to the awful tragedy, that he might verify a theory he had formed on the influence of pain; a theory perhaps like that which led to Mantegazza's crucifixion of pregnant rabbits with dolori atrocissimi.[2] Science here caught her profit from the punishment of crime, but the gain would have been the same had her interest alone been the object. There is always gain, always some aid to memory;—but what of the cost?
It cannot be expected that any Medical College, of its own accord and without outside pressure, will restrict or hamper its freedom of action. As a condition of prosperity and success it cannot show less than is exhibited by other medical schools; it must keep abreast of "advanced thought," and do and demonstrate in every way what its rivals demonstrate and do. There can be no question but that there is to-day a strong public demand for continental methods of physiological instruction. Who make this demand? You, gentlemen, students of medicine, and they who follow in your pathway. This year it is you who silently request this aid to your memory of the physiological statements of your text books; another year, another class of young men and young women, occupying the same benches, or filling the same laboratory, repeats the demand for the same series of illustrations. You, perhaps, will have gone forward to take your places in active life, to assume the real burdens of the medical profession. To those succeeding years of thought, reflection and usefulness, let me appeal, respecting the absolute necessity of all class demonstrations and laboratory work involving pain. Postpone if you please, the ready decision which, fresh from your class-room, you are perhaps only too willing to give me to-day; I do not wish it. But some time in the future, after years have gone by, remembering all you have seen and aided in the doing, tell us if you can, exactly wherein you received, in added potency for helping human suffering and for the treatment of human ills, the equivalent of that awful expenditure of pain which you are now demanding, and which by unprotesting acquiescence, you are to-day helping to inflict.