Sir William Gull thinks "there are but few experiments performed on living creatures where sensation is not removed," yet Dr. Rutherford admits "about half" his experiments to have been made upon animals sensitive to pain. Professor Rolleston, of Oxford University, tells us "the whole question of anæsthetizing animals has an element of uncertainty"; and Professor Rutherford declares it "impossible to say" whether even artificial respiration is painful or not, "unless the animal can speak." Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew's, says of that most painful experiment, poisoning by strychnine, that it cannot be efficiently shown if the animal be under chloroform. Dr. Davy, of Guy's, on the contrary, always gives chloroform, and finds it no impediment to successful demonstration, Is opium an anæsthetic? Claude Bernard declares that sensibility exists even though the animal be motionless: "Il sent la douleur, mais il a, pour ainsi dire, perdu l'idee de la defense."[21] But Dr. Brunton, of St. Bartholomew's hospital, London, has no hesitation whatever in contradicting this statement "emphatically, however high an authority it may be."
Curare, a poison invented by South American Indians for their arrows, is much used in physiological laboratories to paralyze the motor nerves, rendering an animal absolutely incapable of the slightest disturbing movement. Does it at the same time destroy sensation, or is the creature conscious of every pang? Claude Bernard, of Paris, Sharpey, of London, and Flint, of New York[22] all agree that sensation is not abolished; on the other hand, Rutherford regards curare as a partial anæsthetic, and Huxley strongly intimates that Bernard in thus deciding from experiments that it does not affect the cerebral hemispheres or consciousness, "jumped at a conclusion for which neither he nor anybody else had any scientific justification." This is extraordinary language for one experimentalist to use regarding others! If it is possible that such men as Claude Bernard and Professor Flint have "jumped at" one utterly unscientific conclusion, notwithstanding the most painstaking of vivisections, what security have we that other of our theories in physiology now regarded as absolutely established may not be one day as severely ridiculed by succeeding investigators? Is it, after all, true, that the absolute certainty of our most important deductions must remain forever hidden "unless the animal can speak"?
II. Between advocating State supervision of painful vivisection, and proposing with Mr. Bergh the total suppression of all experiments, painful or otherwise, there is manifestly a very wide distinction. Unfortunately, the suggestion of any interference whatever invariably rouses the anger of those most interested—an indignation as unreasonable, to say the least, as that of the merchant who refuses a receipt for money just paid to him, on the ground that a request for a written acknowledgement is a reflection upon his honesty. I cannot see how otherwise than by State supervision we are to reach abuses which confessedly exist. Can we trust the sensitiveness and conscience of every experimenter? Nobody claims this. One of the leading physiologists in this country, Dr. John C. Dalton, admits "that vivisection may be, and has been, abused by reckless, unfeeling, or unskillful persons;" that he himself has witnessed abroad, in a veterinary institution, operations than which "nothing could be more shocking." And yet the unspeakable atrocities at Alfort, to which, apparently, Dr. Dalton alludes, were defended upon the very ground he occupies to-day in advocating experiments of the modern laboratory and classroom; for the Academie des Sciences decided that there was "no occasion to take any notice of complaints; that in the future, as in the past, vivisectional experiments must be left entirely to the judgment of scientific men." What seemed "atrocious" to the more tender-hearted Anglo-Saxon was pronounced entirely justifiable by the French Academy of Science.
A curious question suggests itself in connection with this point. There can be little doubt, I think, that the sentiment of compassion and of sympathy with suffering is more generally diffused among all classes of Great Britain than elsewhere in Europe; and one cannot help wondering what our place might be, were it possible to institute any reliable comparison of national humanity. Should we be found in all respects as sensitive as the English people? Would indignation and protest be as quickly and spontaneously evoked among us by a cruel act? The question may appear an ungracious one, yet it seems to me there exists some reason why it should be plainly asked. There is a certain experiment—one of the most excruciating that can be performed—which consists in exposing the spinal cord of the dog for the purpose of demonstrating the functions of the spinal nerves. It is one, by the way, which Dr. Wilder forgot to enumerate in his summary of the "four kinds of experiments," since it is not the "cutting operation" which forms its chief peculiarity or to which special objection would be made. At present all this preliminary process is generally performed under anæsthetics: it is an hour or two later, when the animal has partly recovered from the severe shock of the operation, that the wound is reopened and the experiment begins. It was during a class demonstration of this kind by Magendie, before the introduction of ether, that the circumstance occurred which one hesitates to think possible in a person retaining a single spark of humanity or pity. "I recall to mind," says Dr. Latour, who was present at the time, "a poor dog, the roots of whose vertebral nerves Magendie desired to lay bare to demonstrate Bell's theory, which he claimed as his own. The dog, mutilated and bleeding twice escaped from under the implacable knife, and threw its front paws around Magendie's neck, licking, as if to soften his murderer and ask for mercy! I confess I was unable to endure that heartrending spectacle."
It was probably in reference to this experiment that Sir Charles Bell, the greatest English physiologist of our century, writing to his brother in 1822, informs him that he hesitates to go on with his investigations. "You may think me silly," he adds, "but I cannot perfectly convince myself that I am authorized in nature or religion to do these cruelties." Now, what do English physiologists and vivisectors of the present day think of the repetition of this experiment solely as a class demonstration?
They have candidly expressed their opinions before a royal commission. Dr. David Ferrier, of King's college, noted for his experiments upon the brain of monkeys, affirms his belief that "students would rebel" at the sight of a painful experiment. Dr. Rutherford, who certainly dared do all that may become a physiologist, confesses mournfully, "I dare not show an experiment upon a dog or rabbit before students, when the animal is not anæsthetized." Dr. Pavy, of Guy's Hospital, asserts that a painful experiment introduced before a class "would not be tolerated for a moment." Sir William Gull, M. D., believes that the repetition of an operation like this upon the spinal nerves would excite the reprobation alike of teacher, pupils, and the public at large. Michael Foster, of Cambridge University, who minutely describes all the details of the experiment on recurrent sensibility in the "Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory," nevertheless tells us, "I have not performed it, and have never seen it done," partly, as he confesses, "from horror at the pain." And finally Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, physiologist at University College, London, states with the utmost emphasis, in regard to the performance of this demonstration on the spinal cord, "I am perfectly certain that no physiologist—none of the leading men in Germany, for example—would exhibit an experiment of that kind."
Now mark the contrast. This experiment—which we are told passes even the callousness of Germany to repeat; which every leading champion of vivisection in Great Britain reprobates for medical teaching; which some of them shrink even from seeing, themselves, from horror at the tortures necessarily inflicted; which the most ruthless among them dare not exhibit to the young men of England,—this experiment has been performed publicly again and again in American medical colleges, without exciting, so far as we know, even a whisper of protest or the faintest murmur of remonstrance! The proof is to be found in the published statements of the experimenter himself. In his "Text-Book of Physiology," Professor Flint says, "Magendie showed very satisfactorily that the posterior roots (of the spinal cord) were exclusively sensory, and this fact has been confirmed by more recent observations upon the higher classes of animals. We have ourselves frequently exposed and irritated the roots of the nerves in dogs, in public demonstrations in experiments on the recurrent sensibility, ... and in another series of observations."[23]
This is the experience of a single professional teacher; but it is improbable that this experiment has been shown only to the students of a single medical college in the United States; it has doubtless been repeated again and again in different colleges throughout the country. If Englishmen are, then, so extremely sensitive as Ferrier, Gull, and Burdon-Sanderson would have us believe, we must necessarily conclude that the sentiment of compassion is far greater in Britain than in America. Have we drifted backward in humanity? Have American students learned to witness, without protest, tortures at the sight of which English students would rebel? We are told that there is no need of any public sensitiveness on this subject. We should trust entirely, as they do in France,—at Alfort, for example,—"to the judgment of the investigator." There must be no lifting of the veil to the outside multitude; for the priests of this unpitying science there must be as absolute immunity from criticism or inquiry as was ever demanded before the shrine of Delphi or the altars of Baal. "Let them exercise their solemn office," demands Dr. Wilder, "not only unrestrained by law, but upheld by public sentiment."
For myself, I cannot believe this position is tenable. Nothing seems to me more certain than the results that must follow if popular sentiment in this country shall knowingly sustain the public demonstration of an experiments in pain, which can find no defender among the physiologists of Great Britain. It has been my fortune to know something of the large hospitals of Europe; and I confess I do not know a single one in countries where painful vivisection flourishes, unchecked by law, wherein the poor and needy sick are treated with the sympathy, the delicacy, or even the decency, which so universally characterize the hospitals of England. When Magendie, operating for cataract, plunged his needle to the bottom of his patient's eye, that he might note upon a human being the effect produced by mechanical irritation of the retina, he demonstrated how greatly the zeal of the enthusiast may impair the responsibility of the physician and the sympathy of man for man.
III. The utility of vivisection in advancing therapeutics, despite much argument, still remains an open question. No one is so foolish as to deny the possibility of future usefulness to any discovery whatever; but there is a distinction, very easily slurred over in the eagerness of debate, between present applicability and remotely potential service. If the pains inflicted on animals are absolutely necessary to the protection of human life and the advancement of practical skill in medicine, should sentiment be permitted to check investigation? An English prelate, the Bishop of Peterborough, speaking in Parliament on this subject, once told the House of Lords that "it was very difficult to decide what was unnecessary pain," and as an example of the perplexities which arose in his own mind he mentioned "the case of the wretched man who was convicted of skinning cats alive, because their skins were more valuable when taken from the living animal than from the dead one. The extra money," added the Bishop, "got the man a dinner!"[24] Whether in this particular case the excuse was well received by the judge, the reverend prelate neglected to inform us; but it is certain that the plea for painful experimentation rests substantially on the same basis. Out of the agonies of sentient brutes we are to pluck the secret of longer living and the art of surer triumph over intractable disease.