A CHAPTER WHEREIN STUDENTS IN SURGERY MAY FIND SOME FACTS WHICH WERE NEW TO THEM IN THE HISTORY OF THEIR OWN PROFESSION.
If I have more to spin
The wheel shall go.
HERBERT.
Another reproach to which the medical profession was exposed arose from the preparatory studies which it required. The natural but unreflecting sentiment of horror with which anatomy is everywhere regarded by the populace, was unfortunately sanctioned by the highest authorities of the Roman Church. Absolutely necessary for the general good as that branch of science indisputably is, it was reprobated by some of the Fathers in the strongest and most unqualified terms; they called it butchering the bodies of the dead; and all persons who should disinter a corpse for this purpose, were excommunicated by a decree of Boniface the 8th, wherein the science itself was pronounced abominable both in the eyes of God and man. In addition to this cause of obloquy, there was a notion that cruel experiments, such as are now made upon animals, and too often unnecessarily, and therefore wickedly repeated, were sometimes performed upon living men. The Egyptian Physician who is believed first to have taught that the nerves are the organs of sensation, is said to have made the discovery by dissecting criminals alive. The fact is not merely stated by Celsus, but justified by him. Deducing its justification as a consequence from the not-to-be disputed assertion cum in interioribus partibus et dolores, et morborum varia genera nascantur, neminem his adhibere posse remedia, quæ ipse ignoret:—necessarium ergo esse, he proceeds to say, incidere corpora mortuorum, eorumque viscera atque intestina scrutari. LONGEQUE OPTIME FECISSE Herophilum et Erasistratum, qui nocentes homines à regibus ex carcere acceptos, VIVOS INCIDERINT; considerarintque, ETIAM SPIRATU MANENTE, ea quæ natura antea clausisset, eorumque posituram, colorem, figuram, magnitudinem, ordinem, duritiem, mollitiem, lævorem, contactum; processus deinde singulorum et recessus; et sive quid inseritur alteri, sive quid partem alterius in se recipit. As late as the sixteenth century surgeons were wont to beg (as it was called) condemned malefactors, whom they professed to put to death in their own way, by opium before they opened them. It might well be suspected that these disciples of Celsus were not more scrupulous than their master; and they who thus took upon themselves the business of an executioner, had no reason to complain if they shared in the reproach attached to his infamous office.
A French author1 of the sixteenth century says that the Physicians at Montpelier, which was then a great school of medicine, had every year two criminals, the one living, the other dead, delivered to them for dissection. He relates that on one occasion they tried what effect the mere expectation of death would produce upon a subject in perfect health, and in order to this experiment they told the gentleman (for such was his rank) who was placed at their discretion, that, as the easiest mode of taking away his life, they would employ the means which Seneca had chosen for himself, and would therefore open his veins in warm water. Accordingly they covered his face, pinched his feet without lancing them, and set them in a foot-bath, and then spoke to each other as if they saw that the blood were flowing freely, and life departing with it. The man remained motionless, and when after a while they uncovered his face they found him dead.
1 BOUCHET.
It would be weakness or folly to deny that dangerous experiments for the promotion of medical or surgical practice may, without breach of any moral law, or any compunctious feeling, be tried upon criminals whose lives are justly forfeited. The Laureate has somewhere in his farraginous notes de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, produced a story of certain Polish physicians who obtained permission to put on the head of a criminal as soon as it had been cut off, and an assurance of his pardon if they should succeed in reuniting it. There is nothing to be objected to such an experiment, except its utter unreasonableness.
When it was necessary that what was at that time a most difficult and dangerous surgical operation should be performed upon Louis XIV, enquiry was made for men afflicted with the same disease, they were conveyed to the house of the minister Louvois, and there in presence of the King's physician Fagon, Felix the chief surgeon operated upon them. Most of these patients died; they were interred by night, but notwithstanding all precautions it was observed that dead bodies were secretly carried from that house, and rumours got abroad that a conspiracy had been discovered, that suspected persons had been brought before the minister and had either died under the question or been made away with by poison under his roof. The motive for this secresy was that the King might be saved from that anxiety which the knowledge of what was going on must have excited in him. In consequence of these experiments, Felix invented new instruments which he tried at the Hotel des Invalides, and when he had succeeded with them the result was communicated to the King, who submitted to the operation with characteristic fortitude. The surgeon performed it firmly and successfully; but the agitation which he had long struggled against and suppressed, produced then a general tremour from which he never recovered. The next day, in bleeding one of his own friends he maimed him for life.
This was a case in which the most conscientious practitioner would have felt no misgiving; there was no intentional sacrifice of life, or infliction of unnecessary suffering. So too when inoculation for the small-pox was introduced into this country; some condemned criminals gladly consented to be inoculated instead of hanged, and saved their lives by the exchange.