But the Quaker stuck to his idea; his mission, he said, was to drive three things from this world: war, hunting and shooting, and experiments on live animals. Magendie had to show him out.
Three years later, Claude Bernard, in his turn, was taxed with barbarity by a Police Magistrate. In order to study the digestive properties of gastric juice, it had occurred to him to collect it by means of a cannula, a sort of silver tap which he adapted to the stomach of live dogs. A Berlin surgeon, M. Dieffenbach, who was staying in Paris, expressed a wish to see this application of a cannula to the stomach. M. Pelouze, the chemist, had a laboratory in the Rue Dauphine; he offered it to Claude Bernard. A stray dog was used as a subject for the experiment and shut up in the yard of the house, where Claude Bernard wished to keep a watch on him. But, as the treatment in no wise hindered the dog from running about, the door of the yard was hardly opened when he escaped, cannula and all.
“A few days later,” writes Claude Bernard in the course of an otherwise grave report concerning the progress of general physiology in France (1867), “I was still in bed, early one morning, when I received a visit from a man who came to tell men that the Police Commissary of the Medicine School District wished to speak to me, and that I must go round to see him. I went in the course of the day to the Police Commissariat of the Rue du Jardinet; I found a very respectable-looking little old man, who received me very coldly at first and without saying anything. He took me into another room and showed me, to my great astonishment, the dog on whom I had operated in M. Pelouze’s laboratory, asking me if I confessed to having fixed that instrument in his stomach. I answered affirmatively, adding that I was delighted to see my cannula, which I thought I had lost. This confession, far from satisfying the Commissary, apparently provoked his wrath, for he gave me an admonition of most exaggerated severity, accompanied with threats for having had the audacity to steal his dog to experiment on it.
“I explained that I had not stolen his dog, but that I had bought it of some individuals who sold dogs to physiologists, and who claimed to be employed by the police in picking up stray dogs. I added that I was sorry to have been the involuntary cause of the grief occasioned in his household by the misadventure to the dog, but that the animal would not die of it; that the only thing to do was to let me take away my silver cannula and let him keep his dog. Those last words altered the Commissary’s language and completely calmed his wife and daughter. I removed my instrument and left, promising to return, which I did the next and following days. The dog was perfectly cured in a day or two, and I became a friend of the family, completely securing the Commissary’s future protection. It was on that account that I soon after set up my laboratory in his District, and for many years continued my private classes of experimental physiology, enjoying the protection and warnings of the Commissary and thus avoiding much unpleasantness, until the time when I was at last made an assistant to Magendie at the Collège de France.”
The London Society for the Protection of Animals had the singular idea of sending to Napoleon III complaints, almost remonstrances, on the vivisection practised within the French Empire. The Emperor simply sent on those English lamentations to the Academy of Medicine. The matter was prolonged by academical speeches. In a letter addressed to M. Grandeau, undated, but evidently written in August, 1863, Claude Bernard showed some irritation, a rare thing with him. Declaring that he would not go to the Academy and listen to the “nonsense” of “those who protect animals in hatred of mankind” he gave his concluding epitome: “You ask me what are the principal discoveries due to vivisection, so that you can mention them as arguments for that kind of study. All the knowledge possessed by experimental physiology can be quoted in that connection; there is not a single fact which is not the direct and necessary consequence of vivisection. From Galen, who, by cutting the laryngeal nerves, learnt their use for respiration and the voice, to Harvey, who discovered circulation; Pecquet and Aselli, the lymphatic vessels; Haller, muscular irritability; Bell and Magendie, the nervous functions, and all that has been learnt since the extension of that method of vivisection, which is the only experimental method; in biology, all that is known on digestion, circulation, the liver, the sympathetic system, the bones, Development—all, absolutely all, is the result of vivisection, alone or combined with other means of study.”
In 1875, he again returned to this idea in his experimental medicine classes at the Collège de France: “It is to experimentation that we owe all our precise notions on the functions of the viscera and a fortiori on the properties of such organs as muscles, nerves, etc.”
One more interesting quotation might have been offered to the members of the Congress. A Swede had questioned Darwin on vivisection, for the anti-vivisectionist propaganda was spreading on every side. Darwin, who, like Pasteur, did not admit that useless suffering should be inflicted on animals (Pasteur carried this so far that he would never, he said, have had the courage to shoot a bird for sport)—Darwin, in a letter dated April 14th, 1881, approved any measures that could be taken to prevent cruelty, but he added: “On the other hand, I know that physiology can make no progress if experiments on living animals are suppressed, and I have an intimate conviction that to retard the progress of physiology is to commit a crime against humanity.... Unless one is absolutely ignorant of all that Science has done for humanity, one must be convinced that physiology is destined to render incalculable benefits in the future to man and even to animals. See the results obtained by M. Pasteur’s work on the germs of contagious diseases: will not animals be the first to profit thereby? How many lives have been saved, how much suffering spared by the discovery of parasitic worms following on experiments made by Virchow and others on living animals!”
The London Congress marked a step on the road of progress. Besides the questions which were discussed and which were capable of precise solution, the scientific spirit showed itself susceptible of permeating other general subjects. Instead of remaining the impassive Sovereign we are wont to fancy her, Science—and this was proved by Pasteur’s discoveries and their consequences, as Paget, Tyndall, Lister, and Priestley loudly proclaimed—Science showed herself capable of associating with pure research and perpetual care for Truth a deep feeling of compassion for all suffering and an ever-growing thirst for self-sacrifice.
Pasteur’s speech at the London Medical Congress was printed at the request of an English M.P. and distributed to all the members of the House of Commons. Dr. H. Gueneau de Mussy, who had spent part of his life in England, having followed the Orleans family into exile, wrote to Pasteur on August 15, “I have been very happy in witnessing your triumph; you are raising us up again in the eyes of foreign nations.”
Applause was to Pasteur but a stimulus to further efforts. He was proud of his discoveries, but not vain of the effect they produced; he said in a private letter: “The Temps again refers, in a London letter, to my speech at the Congress. What an unexpected success!”