Experiments on Animals

by Stephen Paget

Certificate A.

"We hereby certify that, in our opinion, insensibility in the animal on which any such experiment may be performed cannot be produced by anæsthetics without necessarily frustrating the object of such experiment."

Certificate B.

"We hereby certify that, in our opinion, the killing of the animal on which any such experiment is performed before it recovers from the influence of the anæsthetic administered to it, would necessarily frustrate the object of such experiment."

Under one or other of these certificates must be scheduled all inoculations, injections, feeding-experiments, transplantations of particles of disease, immunisations, and the like. They must be scheduled somehow; and that is the only way of doing it. Where the act of inducing the disease would itself give any pain, if an anæsthetic were not administered—as in the subdural inoculation of a rabbit, or the intra-peritoneal inoculation of an animal with a particle of cancerous tissue—there the licensee must hold, together with the license, Certificate B, because the act of inducing the disease is itself an operation, done under an anæsthetic. If the animal be a dog or a cat, he must hold Certificates B and EE; if it be a horse, ass, or mule, Certificates B and F.

Where the act of inducing the disease is not itself painful—as in ordinary inoculation, and in feeding-experiments—the licensee must hold, together with his license, Certificate A, because the animal is not anæsthetised. It is not a painful operation; the experiment consists not in the act of putting the hypodermic needle under the animal's skin, but in the subsequent observation of the course of the disease. Take, for instance, the inoculation of a guinea-pig with tubercle-bacilli: the experiment is the production of tubercle; the experiment lasts till the animal is killed and found to be infected; it is therefore scheduled under Certificate A. Or take the testing, on an animal, of an antitoxin; the experiment is not the injection, but the observation of the result; the animal may not suffer, but the injection must still be done under Certificate A. And, if the animal be a dog or a cat, the licensee must hold Certificates A and E; or, if it be a horse, ass, or mule, Certificates A and F.

This want of a special certificate for inoculations is an important matter, because it has led to the belief that painful operations are performed, without anæsthesia, in cases where the only instrument used is a needle. It is hardly reasonable, for instance, that the inoculation of a mouse should be scheduled as a painful operation performed without anæsthesia. The disease, thus painlessly induced, may in many cases be called painless; for instance, snake-venom in the rat, septicæmia in the mouse, malaria in small birds. In other cases, there are such pain and fever as are part of the disease. The form that rabies take in rabbits may fairly be called painless. Inoculations not under the skin, but into the anterior chamber of the eye, are very seldom made; they sound cruel, but cocain renders the surface of the eye wholly insensitive, and the anterior chamber is so far insensitive that a man with blood or pus (hypopyon) in the anterior chamber of the eye may suffer no pain from it. A horse or an ass kept for the giving of an antitoxic serum has a more comfortable life than an omnibus horse; and this preparation of the antitoxins, since it is not an experiment, but a direct use of animals in the recognised service of man, does not require a license or certificates under the Act. But the testing of an antitoxin is an experiment, and must be made under a license and Certificate A.

It is not the business of this book to consider whether the sensitiveness of a dog, a rabbit, or a guinea-pig can fairly be stated in terms of the physical and mental sensitiveness of men and women. In the world of animals, as in the world of humanity, there are differences of sensitiveness. Anyhow, the pain inflicted on animals may in some cases be measured:—

"A guinea-pig that will rest quietly in your hands before you commence to inject it, will remain perfectly quiet during the introduction of the needle under the skin; and the moment it is returned to the cage it resumes its interrupted feeding.

"Arteries, veins, and most of the parts of the viscera, are without the sense of touch. We have actual proof of this in what takes place when a horse is bled for the purpose of obtaining curative serum. With a sharp lance a cut may be made in the skin so quickly and easily that the animal does nothing more than twitch the skin-muscle of the neck, or give his head a shake, whilst of the further proceeding of introducing a hollow needle into the vein the animal takes not the slightest notice. Some horses, indeed, will stand perfectly quiet during the whole operation, munching a carrot, nibbling at a wisp of hay, or playing with a button on the vest of the groom standing at its head.