The following extract from records of the Belgian Academy of Medicine illustrates this subject: ‘Researches on the inoculability of cancer ought to be encouraged. The numerous experiments made on animals are still contradictory in results. Drs. Francotte and De Rector have in the years 1891-92 inoculated mice under the skin of the shoulder. The inoculations were carried on from June, 1891, to May, 1892, when the following appearances were presented: The whole region of the shoulder was inflamed; there was necrosis of the corresponding upper extremity, which dropped off from dry gangrene; the stump left was indurated, hard, and painful, whilst the lymphatic glands in connection with the part were enlarged. The examination of the tumour disclosed nothing very particular. The bones were the seat of osteoporosis, and the arteries showed arteritis. The investigators believe the tumours were cancerous, but this statement must be received with caution.’
Such long-continued torture, even of a mouse, is morally degrading, and, as if in retribution, is doomed to be useless.
A Chinese medical author, Tuan Mei, writing in the last century, 1716 to 1797, lays down a true medical axiom when he marks the difference between death and torture as follows: ‘Living creatures are for our use, and we may put them to death. But we may not make death a boon, and then withhold it from them.’
CHAPTER VIII
What is Scientific Research?
The apparent opposition between popular and medical judgment in relation to certain methods of biological research which claim to be scientific, necessitates a clearer knowledge of what science is, and a recognition of the methods of research which can alone be called scientific.
It is certain that knowledge of truth must reconcile varying but honest opinions, and furnish plans of investigation that neither shock the humane development of our nature nor hinder our intellectual progress towards truth.
The terms ‘science’ and ‘scientific’ are constantly used and abused. They are often applied to the accumulating of facts or of phenomena; but such accumulation is not necessarily science, and may even hinder science. For although the collecting of facts may bring together valuable materials essential for future use, it may also bring together rotten or sham materials, which will interfere with sound work. A faulty method of endeavouring to obtain facts may seriously destroy the value of the phenomena thus observed.
The gratification simply of intellectual activity or curiosity must not be confounded with genuine research. Curiosity is the outcome of ignorance. Now, our ignorance of much in Nature is no reproach to anyone, but the way in which curiosity is gratified marks the difference between the simple child and the rational adult. In the childish development curiosity, though useful, is superficial and short-sighted; it is necessarily a shallow impulse, which cannot realize the wide relations of existence, and its satisfaction has no necessary connection with the acquisition of valuable knowledge. But the adult rises into a higher plane of thought. Curiosity is no longer unduly exercised, but has grown into a love of truth. It has become that reverential use of reason which is the basis of truth, and which forms the true guide to the attainment of scientific knowledge; for rational method does not isolate a fact from all its connections, but sees it in its relations and in due proportion. Thus only can valuable knowledge be acquired.
Neither is analysis science. It is only when the observations of analysis are corrected and proved by synthesis that the truth of science can be obtained.
A clear recognition of the different use of analysis and of synthesis is essential in any claim of research to be called scientific. ‘Although by analysis we separate and by synthesis we combine, yet in the synthesis there is more than in all the parts taken analytically. The mere synthesis introduces something entirely new.’