[From Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1884.]
VIVISECTION.
Omitting entirely any consideration of the ethics of vivisection, the only points to which in the present article the attention of the reader is invited are those in which scientific inquirers may be supposed to have a common interest.
I. One danger to which scientific truth seems to be exposed is a peculiar tendency to underestimate the numberless uncertainties and contradictions created by experimentation upon living beings. Judging from the enthusiasm of its advocates, one would think that by this method of interrogating nature all fallacies can be detected, all doubts determined. But, on the contrary, the result of experimentation, in many directions, is to plunge the observer into the abyss of uncertainty. Take, for example, one of the simplest and yet most important questions possible,—the degree of sensibility in the lower animals. Has an infinite number of experiments enabled physiologists to determine for us the mere question of pain? Suppose an amateur experimenter in London, desirous of performing some severe operations upon frogs, to hesitate because of the extreme painfulness of his methods, what replies would he be likely to obtain from the highest scientific authorities of England as to the sensibility of these creatures? We may fairly judge their probable answers to such inquiries from their evidence already given before a royal commission.[20]
Dr. Carpenter would doubtless repeat his opinion that "frogs have extremely little perception of pain;" and in the evidence of that experienced physiologist George Henry Lewes, he would find the cheerful assurance, "I do not believe that frogs suffer pain at all." Our friend applies, let us suppose, to Dr. Klein, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, who despises the sentimentality which regards animal suffering as of the least consequence; and this enthusiastic vivisector informs him that, in his English experience, the experiment which caused the greatest pain without anæsthetics was the cauterization of the cornea of a frog. Somewhat confused at finding that a most painful experiment can be performed upon an animal that does not suffer he relates this to Dr. Swaine Taylor, of Guy's Hospital, who does not think that Klein's experiment would cause severe suffering; but of another—placing a frog in cold water and raising the temperature to about 100°—"that," says Doctor Taylor, "would be a cruel experiment: I cannot see what purpose it can answer." Before leaving Guy's Hospital, our inquiring friend meets Dr. Pavy, one of the most celebrated physiologists in England, who tells him that in this experiment, stigmatized by his colleague as "cruel," the frog would in reality suffer very little; that if we ourselves were treated to a bath gradually raised from a medium temperature to the boiling point, "I think we should not feel any pain;" that were we plunged at once into boiling water, "even then," says the enthusiastic and scientific Dr. Pavy, "I do not think pain would be experienced!" Our friend goes then to Dr. Sibson, of St. Mary's Hospital, who as a physiologist of many years' standing, sees no objection to freezing, starving, or baking animals alive; but he declares of boiling a frog, "That is a horrible idea, and I certainly am not going to defend it." Perplexed more than ever, he goes to Dr. Lister, of King's College, and is astonished upon being told "that the mere holding of a frog in your warm hand is about as painful as any experiment probably that you would perform." Finally, one of the strongest advocates of vivisections, Dr. Anthony, pupil of Sir Charles Bell, would exclaim, if a mere exposition of the lungs of the frog were referred to, "Fond as I am of physiology, I would not do that for the world!"
Now, what has our inquirer learned by his appeal to science? Has he gained any clear and absolute knowledge? Hardly two of the experimenters named agree upon one simple yet most important preliminary of research—the sensibility to pain of a single species of animals.
Let us interrogate scientific opinion a little further on this question of sensibility. Is there any difference in animals as regards susceptibility to pain? Dr. Anthony says that we may take the amount of intelligence in animals as a fair measure of their sensibility—that the pain one would suffer would be in proportion to its intelligence. Dr. Rutherford, Edinburgh, never performs an experiment upon a cat or a spaniel if he can help it, because they are so exceedingly sensitive; and Dr. Horatio Wood, of Philadelphia, tells us that the nervous system of a cat is far more sensitive than that of the rabbit. On the other hand, Dr. Lister, of King's College, is not aware of any such difference in sensibility in animals, and Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew's, finds cats such very good animals to operate with that he on one occasion used ninety in making a single experiment.