Curiosities of Medical Experience

by J. G. Millingen

I readily admit that there does exist much analogy in the structure of man and certain animals in the higher grades of the creation; that the functions of respiration, digestion, absorption, locomotion, are to a certain extent similar, and that experiments made to ascertain the mechanism of these functions (if I may so express myself), may tend, in some measure, to teach us that which the inanimate corpse of man cannot exhibit; but, admitting to the full extent of argumentation, the analogy of these functions, I do maintain that the phenomena of life differ widely between man and animals, and the very nervous influences which we seek to discover are, in life, of a nature totally different. Were it not so, would the senses of different animals, rendered more or less acute or obtuse according to their natural pursuits and protective habits, be so materially unequal? Indeed, the laws of nature that submit every creature to the immutable will of Providence are totally unlike; and each apparatus of life in divers beings seems to be especially calculated for the identical race: what is poison to the one is an aliment to another; and the vivid light which the eyes of one creature can bear, would produce blindness in another; the same effluvia which one animal would not notice, would guide another over trackless wastes in search of friend or foe. I therefore maintain, that the mere material examination of the living organs of animals can no more tend to illustrate their vital principle, than the keenest anatomical labours can enable us to attain a knowledge of the nature of our immortal and imperishable parts.

I shall enter still more minutely into this subject. In the barbarous experiments to which I allude, animals bearing the strongest resemblance to man (at least in their conformation, for Heaven, in its mercy, did not gift them with what we call mind) are usually selected amongst such as possess a heart with four cavities, and double lungs. The dog—the natural companion of man, his most faithful friend in weal and woe, the guardian of his couch and property, the protector of his infants, the only mourner o’er the pauper’s grave!—dogs, are in general selected for the scientific shambles; and this for obvious reasons,—they are more easily procured, and at a cheaper rate; moreover, they are more manageable and unresisting under the mangling scalpel. Well, thousands of these creatures have been starved to death with butter, sugar, and oil, to prove that they must die in all the aggravated pangs of hunger,—pangs producing ulcerated eyes, blindness, staggers, parched up organs, unless their food contains azote. Will any one maintain, that a similar nourishment would produce similar effects on man? Certainly not. The one was created by nature to consume animal substances highly azotized; the other, from the transition of life to which he is born to be exposed, is essentially polyphagous.

Then, again, millions of animals have had their bones broken, scraped, bruised in every possible manner, to discover the process of the formation of bone, called Osteogeny: has a single fracture of a human limb been more rapidly consolidated by these experiments, which fill hundreds of pages in the works of Duhamel, Haller, Scarpa, and other physiologists? Animals will digest substances that would kill a human being—have the experiments in which their palpitating stomach and intestines have been torn from them, lacerated, pricked, cut, separated from their surrounding vessels and nerves, increased our means of relieving the dyspepsia of the sensualist, the surfeit of the glutton, or the nausea of the dissolute? On the other hand, the gin, the ardent spirits in which the drunkard wallows, would soon destroy what we think proper to call a brute!

In many animals, moreover, there is a tenacity of life—highly convenient to the physiologist, since it enables him to prolong his experimental cruelties—which man does not possess; and we find the electric fluid acting much longer upon their muscles even after death, than on a human body or its severed limbs.

Another point to be considered is the assertion of the advantages to be derived from contemplating the living viscera in a healthy state. Good God! a healthy state!—what a mockery, what a perversion of language! Behold the dog, stolen from his master—(for theft is encouraged to supply the man of science—and theft of the worst character, since it is of the most cruel nature;—our goods, our money, may be restored, replaced by industry, but what hand can restore the faithful companion of our solitude, whose looks seem to study our thoughts! left us perhaps by the lost one of our heart, symbol of that fidelity which death alone abridged!) the poor animal hungry, chained up for days and nights pining for his lost master, is led to the butchery. Still he looks up for compassion to man, his natural protector, licks the very hand that grasps him until his feeble limbs are lashed to the table! In vain he struggles—in vain he expresses his sufferings and his fears in piteous howls: a muzzle is buckled on to stifle his troublesome cries, and his concentrated groans heave his agonized breast in convulsive throes, until the scalpel is plunged in his helpless extended body! His blood flows in torrents, his very heart is exposed to the torturer’s searching hand, and nerves which experience anguish from a mere breath of air, are lacerated with merciless ingenuity,—and this is a healthy state! The viscera exposed to atmospheric influence are already parched, and have lost their natural colour, and not a single function is performed in normal regularity. One only effort is natural until vital power is exhausted—a vain instinctive resistance against his butchers!—The heart sickens at such scenes, when cruelty that would bid defiance to the savage’s vindictive barbarity, sacrifices thousands of harmless beings at the shrine of vanity. For let the matter not be mistaken—these experiments are mostly made to give an appearance of verisimilitude to the most absurd and visionary doctrines; and if a proof were required of this assertion, it can be easily obtained by reading the works of various physiologists at different periods, who all draw different deductions from similar facts. For when the mind labours under a certain impression, or a reputation is founded upon the support of a doctrine, these facts are distorted with Procrustean skill to suit the views of the experimentalist.

Let us, for instance, consider the subject of digestion, to ascertain the nature of which, thousands—millions of animals have been ripped up alive. This practice has been attributed to coction, to elixation, to fermentation, to putrefaction, to trituration, to maceration, to dissolution, and to many other shades and shadows of similar theories; and were additional millions of living victims sacrificed in further scientific hecatombs, posterity may deem our present vain glorious physiologists as ignorant of the matter as they might consider their numerous predecessors in the same career of groping curiosity. Has the cruel extraction of the spleen from a thousand dogs to show that they could live without that viscous, explained the nature of its functions, or enabled us more successfully to control its obstinate diseases?

We know nothing of the phenomena of life; all our functions are regulated by an allwise Power that sets at naught human presumption—and Hippocrates justly called this harmonic organization a concensus, or a circle, in which we could not discover the commencement or the end.

There does however exist one course of experiments which probably might prove beneficial to mankind. The search of antidotes to various poisons that are too frequently administered by criminal hands; but here again experiments fall short of our expectations, for these substances act differently upon different animals, and even to some the prussic acid in large doses may be given with impunity. But I affirm, and can prove it, that in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, in which such substances are given to animals, it is not with a view to discover antidotes, but to ascertain, according to the unfortunate creature’s species, size, and condition, how long he can linger under the pangs of the poison, or what is the dose sufficient to occasion death. Of what benefit can it be to humanity to know that thirty drops of hydro-cyanic acid destroys dogs and cats in the space of six, twelve, or fifteen minutes; that twenty-six drops kill a rabbit in three minutes; that one drop introduced into the bill of a sparrow deprives it of life in eleven minutes; that a duck takes fifteen drops to put an end to its convulsive struggles; and that the exposing animals to the influence of hydro-cyanic acid gas destroys them in two, four, six, eight, and ten seconds? What benefit does society reap from the knowledge that, after the most excruciating suffering, a dog died in five hours after having taken half an ounce of tobacco, and that another ill-fated canine victim in whose limbs tobacco had been introduced, died of paralysis and in horrible convulsions in about an hour? Were antidotes sought in the thousands of similar cases that I could adduce? Certainly not—the experiments merely went to ascertain the power of the drug, and the only possible good that could have resulted from the barbarous trial, was the appearance of the viscera after death; a fact that one experiment could demonstrate as well as one thousand—but which could be more effectually exhibited in human creatures who died from the effects of deleterious substances. In short, these experiments are nothing more than cold calculations on the tenacity of life in various individuals. Every one knows that arsenic and prussic acid destroy life, and surely such an assertion on the part of a lecturer to his pupils should satisfy them on this head without having recourse to illustrations of the fact. In the case of supposed poison introduced into alimentary substances, and which are given to dogs to prove the criminal act, surely chemistry is not so little advanced in its boasted progress, not to be able to afford us a test of the presence of poison, without having recourse to so savage an expedient.

Another most absurd argument has been upheld in favour of these experiments in the presence of pupils, that of hardening their feelings in the contemplation of acute sufferings. This assertion is worse than idle and absurd; many of our most able surgeons and anatomists have never practised these cruelties, and yet their nerves have not been unstrung during the most fearful operations. With hands imbrued in blood I have performed the arduous duties of my profession in fourteen battles, yet I never could witness these heartless exhibitions without disgust, and I am sorry to say contempt. I am aware that these sentiments have been called puling professions of humanity; nay, that there are men and women who would weep bitterly over the sufferings of a sick pet, while they would view accumulated human misery unmoved. These are painful anomalies arising too frequently in disappointed minds, when the cup of life has been imbittered by ingratitude, and the “milk of human kindness” curdled by deceit. These are not reasons to prevent us from censuring acts of cruelty, when they may be considered useless in a scientific point of view, and degrading to mankind in regard to private feelings. I can readily believe that the best and the most humane of men, may be induced by an ardent desire to elucidate obscure parts of physiologic inquiry, to try such experiments; but most undoubtedly—unless the object to be so attained was commensurate with the sacrifice and abnegation of humane sentiments, I should deeply lament their obduracy, and be inclined to doubt their benevolence towards their fellow-creatures.

I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polish’d manners, and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility), the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that hath humanity forewarned
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.