3. He refers to Professor Stewart's papers, in the same volume of the Journal of Physiology. The one experiment which he quotes at some length was made at Strasburg, 14 years ago or more.
But we want to know what is done now and here under the Act, not what was done at Berlin or Strasburg 14 or more years ago. Still, the experiments by Professor Stewart have been in constant use, among the opponents of all experiments on animals. In May 1900, at the great annual meeting of the National Society, at Queen's Hall, Dr. Reinhardt said:—
"I will pass on to prove to you, by a few conclusive evidences, for which I can give you chapter and verse, that torture is inflicted on animals by British vivisectors to-day. Now, if you buy the 15th volume of the Journal of Physiology, and look at page 86, you will find there," etc.
To prove that animals are tortured in England to-day, he quotes one experiment made at Strasburg ever so long ago. And, in 1901, Mr. Coleridge wrote, in the Morning Leader, saying: It is with curare, which paralyses motion and leaves sensation intact, that all the most shocking vivisections are performed. And, the same year, Mr. Stephen Smith, a "Medical Patron" of the London Society, wrote: I state emphatically that when curare is used, proper anæsthesia is out of the question.... Curare is used daily throughout England. Mention of an anæsthetic in a report is no guarantee that the animal was anæsthetised.
I cannot find, in all the anti-vivisection literature which I have read, any shadow of evidence that any experiment of any sort or kind has been made in this country, on any sort or kind of animal, under curare alone, for the last sixteen or seventeen years. I believe that I might go further back than that. But surely that is far enough.
Certainly, so long as any curare is used (not as an anæsthetic, but in conjunction with an anæsthetic) in any experiments on animals in this country, the societies will not trouble to inquire how much of it is used. I wrote, therefore, to the Professors of Physiology at Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Oxford, and asked them to tell me how much curare was used in their laboratories throughout 1903, and what anæsthetics were given with it. Some opponents of experiments on animals seem to think that curare is used very often. One of them says that it is "used daily throughout England." So I wrote to these Professors at our Universities, and they kindly sent the following answers:—
1. "Your question re curare is easily answered. We did no experiments with it during the past year. Indeed, I have given it up almost entirely for years, chiefly because it is very difficult to get a preparation which—I suppose from impurities—does not seriously affect the heart. There might still be occasions during which it is necessary to use it—if, e.g. the least muscular movement would vitiate the results of an experiment. But I find it possible in nearly all cases to get such absolute quiescence with morphia or chloral (besides ether and chloroform) that to all intents and purposes I have long given up the use of curare. Of course, if I had occasion to use it, an anæsthetic would be administered at the same time."
2. "I have asked those who worked in the physiological laboratories in 1903 to give me a return of the number of experiments done and of the number in which curare was used. Including my own experiments, I find that 160 in all were made under the License and Certificates B, EE, C. Curare was given in four cases; in two of these the A.C.E. mixture was the anæsthetic, in the other two ether."
3. At the third laboratory, during 1903, curare was given to seven frogs deprived of their brains before it was given, and to one rabbit under ether.
That was the whole use of curare, during a whole year, in three great Universities: at one, seven inanimate frogs, and one rabbit under ether; at another, four animals, under A.C.E. or ether; at another, nothing.