It is not true that vivisection is necessary to the medical student in order that she may attain the thorough knowledge of human physiology which is needed for the intelligent exercise of the medical profession. Class demonstrations in opening the bodies of the lower animals to examine their organs and tissues are misleading in respect to the action of human organs. The action of the human salivary glands, the action of the cavities of the human heart, the secretion of the gastric juice, etc., can be more correctly realized by careful anatomical study in connection with clinical observation of the effects of healthy and diseased action in the human being, than by any amount of bloody experiment and mutilation of still living cats and dogs. Such demonstration may gratify that instinct of curiosity which always exists in youthful human nature, or it may pander to that craving for excitement which makes the spectacle of a surgical operation so much more attractive to the undeveloped mind than careful clinical study—a tendency which is also seen in gambling, watching executions, bull-fights, etc.—but these are tendencies to be repressed in serious and responsible study, not encouraged. The precious mental activities of the student need to be specially trained into observation of our human faculties in health and in disease. The establishment of a Physiological Laboratory for experimenting on living animals, in a medical school, is not only giving a wrong direction to intellectual activity, but is wasting the valuable time of the student, and diverting the attention of the young practitioner from that careful and intelligent study of the human organism, which alone can lead to practical beneficial results. This practice must therefore be condemned, as giving a false direction to the intellectual faculties of the young.
Of the moral danger involved in such methods of study there can be but one opinion by thoughtful and observant persons within the ranks of our Profession.
The exercise of our superior cunning in destroying an animal’s natural means of self-defence, that we may (with convenience to ourselves) watch changes that occur in its organs during the slow process of a lingering death, is an exercise of curiosity which inevitably tends to blunt the moral sense and injure that intelligent sympathy with suffering, which is a fundamental quality in the good physician. The practice of recklessly sacrificing animal life for the gratification, either of curiosity, excitement, or cruelty, tends inevitably to create a habit of mind which affects injuriously all our relations with inferior or helpless classes of creatures. It tends to make us less scrupulous in our treatment of the sick and helpless poor. It increases that disposition to regard the poor as ‘clinical material,’ which has become, alas! not without reason, a widespread reproach to many of the young members of our most honourable and merciful profession. The hardening effect of vivisection is distinctly recognised in the Profession, although often excused under the abused term—‘scientific.’ Dr. Loye, who, with another physician, studied the process of guillotining a malefactor at Troyes, thus writes: ‘Both of us believed that our wide experience of bloody vivisection would have hardened us sufficiently to go through the spectacle without very great emotion.’
It is our duty and privilege, as women entering into the medical profession, to strengthen its humane aspirations—to discourage its dangerous tendencies. We must not be misled by clever or brilliant materialists who take the narrow view that physical life can be profitably studied without reverencing the spiritual force on which it depends. A physiological and pathological laboratory, legitimately conducted for the investigation of healthy and diseased human secretions, in connection with clinical observation, may be made a valuable aid to medical advancement, and I would always encourage the organization of such a laboratory. But to use it for cutting up animals dying under anæsthetics is stupidity, and to convert it into a torture chamber of the lower animals, is an intellectual error and a moral crime.
The possible results of slow deterioration in the moral nature when we violate in any degree our religious standard of justice and mercy may be most strongly realized in living examples of diseased inherited tendencies. Such a fearful example is before us in the life history of the criminal, Jesse Pomeroy, now in the State Prison of Charlestown, Mass., who has spent his life in penal servitude, expiating his atrocious mutilations and murders of little children, committed when he was a lad of fifteen. The deteriorating moral influence exercised on offspring by vicious parental tendencies, is directly exhibited in this living object lesson. The father of this lad was a butcher. His mother, during the gestation of this child, took a persistent and morbid delight in watching the death of the animals slaughtered by her husband. We see in the atrocities committed by her young son, a terrible example of the evil effect which the mind can exercise, in deteriorating individual character and in extending its evil influence to others. All experience proves the powerful influence exercised by the parental, and especially the maternal, qualities upon the offspring. Every woman is potentially a mother. The excuse or toleration of cruelty by a woman upon any living creature is a deadly sin against the grandest force in creation—maternal love.
I earnestly ask all women physicians to consider the special responsibility which rests upon them, to take that large religious view of life which alone can check any degrading tendencies in intellectual human activity and elevate our noble Profession. Let us not be misled by sophistical arguments, but look steadily at the actual facts of animal torture, and work persistently for the total abolition of vivisection from our medical schools. In this way we shall justify our entrance into medicine, and prove ourselves strong supporters of that noble humanity which is the especial characteristic and solid foundation of the Medical Profession.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In 1891.