permitted in non-registered places, for the immediate study of outbreaks of disease, or in circumstances which render it impracticable to use a registered place. Every experiment must be made under a licence; and every application for a licence must be recommended by the signatures of two out of a small body of authorities specified in the act—presidents of certain learned societies and professors of certain universities and colleges. The word “experiment” is not allowed to cover the use of more than one animal.
Most experiments are made not under a licence alone, but under a licence plus one or more certificates, and the wording and working of these certificates must be clearly understood, because it is over them that the question arises as to the amount of pain inflicted by these experiments. Under the licence alone, the animal must be kept under an anaesthetic during the whole of the experiment; and “if the pain is likely to continue after the effect of the anaesthetic has ceased, or if any serious injury has been inflicted on the animal,” it must be killed forthwith under the anaesthetic. Thus, under the licence alone, it is impossible to make an inoculation; for the experiment consists, not in the introduction of the needle under the skin, but in the observation of the results of the inoculation. A guinea-pig inoculated with tubercle cannot be kept under an anaesthetic till the disease appears. The disease is the experiment, and it is therefore an experiment made without an anaesthetic, and not authorized by the licence alone. Again, under the licence alone it would have been impossible to work out the thyroid treatment of myxoedema, or the facts of cerebral localization. For to remove the thyroid gland, or to remove a portion of the surface of the brain, is to inflict a serious injury on the animal. The operation is done under profound anaesthesia—it would be impracticable otherwise; the wound is treated and dressed by the antiseptic method—suppuration would invalidate the result. But a serious injury has been inflicted. Nevertheless, the animal must not be killed forthwith: the result must be watched. These and the like experiments cannot therefore be made under the licence alone. For the removal of such disabilities as these, the act empowers the home secretary to allow certain certificates, to be held with the licence. They must be recommended by two signatures, and various restrictions are put upon them by the home secretary. On July 11, 1898, the home secretary was asked, in the House of Commons, what were the conditions and regulations attached by the Home Office to licences and certificates; and he answered—
“The conditions are not always the same, but may vary according to the nature of the investigation. It is hardly possible, therefore, for me to state all the conditions attached to licences and certificates. The most important conditions, however (besides the limitations as to place, time and number of experiments), and the conditions most frequently imposed, are those as to reporting and the use of antiseptics. The latter condition is that the animals are to be treated with strict antiseptic precautions, and if these fail and pain results, they are to be killed immediately under anaesthetics. The reporting conditions are, in brief, that a written record, in a prescribed form, is to be kept of every experiment, and is to be open for examination by the inspector; that a report of all experiments is to be forwarded to the inspector; and that any published account of an experiment is to be transmitted to the secretary of state. Another condition requires the immediate destruction under anaesthetics of an animal in which severe pain has been induced, after the main result of the experiment has been attained.”
The home secretary attaches to licences and certificates such endorsements as he thinks fit. The bare text of the act, now thirty-four years old, is a very different thing from the administration of the act; and the present writer is in a position to say that the act is administered with great strictness, under a careful system of inquiry and reference.
The certificates are distinguished as A, B, C, E, EE and F. Certificate D, which permitted the testing, by experiments, of “former discoveries alleged to have been made,” has fallen into disuse. Certificate C permits experiments to be made by way of illustration of lectures. They must be made under the provisions contained in the act as to the use of anaesthetics. Certificates E and EE permit experiments on dogs or cats; certificate F permits experiments on horses, asses or mules. These certificates are linked with Certificate A or Certificate B. It is round these two certificates, A and B, that the controversy as to the pain caused by experiments on animals is maintained.
Certificate A permits experiments to be made without anaesthesia. It is worded as follows: “Whereas A. B. of [here insert address and profession] has represented to us (i.e. two authorities) that he proposes, if duly authorized under the above-mentioned act, to perform on living animals certain experiments described below: We hereby certify that, in our opinion, insensibility in the animal on which any such experiment may be performed cannot be produced by anaesthetics without necessarily frustrating the object of such experiment.” All inoculations under the skin, all feeding experiments and the like, are scheduled under this certificate. They must be scheduled somehow: they cannot legally be made under a licence alone. Though the only instrument used is a hypodermic needle, yet every inoculation is officially returned as an experiment, calculated to give pain, performed without an anaesthetic. It is for inoculations and the like experiments, and for them alone, and for nothing else, that Certificate A is allowed (or A linked with E or F). This want of a special certificate for inoculations, and this wresting of Certificate A for the purpose, have led to an erroneous belief that “cutting operations” are permitted by the act without an anaesthetic. But, as the home secretary said in parliament, in March 1897, “Certificate A is never allowed except for inoculations and similar trivial operations, and in every case a condition is attached to prevent unnecessary pain.” And again he wrote in 1898, “Such special certificates (dispensing with anaesthetics) are granted only for inoculations, feeding and similar procedures involving no cutting. The animal has to be killed under anaesthetics if it be in pain, so soon as the result of the experiment is ascertained.”
Certificate B permits the keeping alive of the animal after the initial operation of an experiment. It is worded as follows: “Whereas A. B. of [here insert address and profession] has represented to us (i.e. two authorities) that he proposes, if duly authorized under the above-mentioned act, to perform on living animals certain experiments described below, such animals being, during the whole of the initial operation of such experiments, under the influence of some anaesthetic of sufficient power to prevent their feeling pain: 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 anaesthetic administered to it would necessarily frustrate the object of such experiment.” Certificate B (or B linked with EE or F) is used for those experiments which consist in an operation plus subsequent observation of the animal. The section of a nerve, the removal of a secretory organ, the establishment of a fistula, the plastic surgery of the intestine, the sub-dural method of inoculation—these and the like experiments are made under this certificate. We may take, to illustrate the use of Certificate B, Horsley's observations on the thyroid gland. The removal of the gland was the initial operation; and this was performed under an anaesthetic, and with the antiseptic method. Then the animal was kept under observation. The experiment is neither the operation alone nor the observation alone, but the two together. The purpose of this certificate is set forth in the inspector's report for 1909. “In the experiments performed under Certificate B, or B linked with EE, 1704 in number, the initial operations are performed under anaesthetics from the influence of which the animals are allowed to recover. The operations are required to be performed antiseptically, so that the healing of the wounds shall, as far as possible, take place without pain. If the antiseptic precautions fail, and suppuration occurs, the animal is required to be killed. It is generally essential for the success of these experiments that the wounds should heal cleanly, and the surrounding parts remain in a healthy condition. After the healing of the wounds the animals are not necessarily, or even generally, in pain, since experiments involving the removal of important organs, including portions of the brain, may be performed without giving rise to pain after the recovery from the operation; and after the section of a part of the nervous system, the resulting degenerative changes are painless. In the event of a subsequent operation being necessary in an experiment performed under Certificate B, or B linked with EE, a condition is attached to the licence requiring all operative procedures to be carried out under anaesthetics of sufficient power to prevent the animal feeling pain; and no observations or stimulation's of a character to cause pain are allowed to be made without the animals being anesthetized. In no case has a cutting operation more severe than a superficial venesection (the opening of a vein just under the skin) been allowed to be performed without anaesthetics.”
From this brief account of the chief provisions of the act, we come to consider the general method of experiments on animals in the United Kingdom, and the question of the infliction of pain on them. The figures for a representative year may be given. The total number of licensees in 1909, in England and Scotland, was 483: of whom 135 performed no experiments during the
