To stand still, we must accept our present knowledge as a finality, complacently pursuing the well-worn paths; neither hoping nor trying for anything better—happily, again, an impossibility.
To grow better, we must try new methods, give new drugs, perform new operations, or perform old ones in new ways; that is to say, we must make experiments. To these experiments there must be a beginning: they must be tried first on some living body; for it is often forgotten that the dead body can only teach manual dexterity. They must then be tried either on an animal or on you. Which shall it be? In many cases, of course, which involve little or no risk to life or health, it is perfectly legitimate to test probable improvements on man first, although one of the gravest and most frequent charges made against us doctors is that we are experimenting upon our patients.
But in many cases they involve great risk to life or health. Here they can not, nay, they must not, be tested first upon man. Must we, then, absolutely forego them, no matter how much of promise for life and health and happiness they possess? If not, the only alternative we have is to try them on the lower animals, and we would be most unwise, nay, more, we would be cruel, cruel both to man and to animals, if we refused to pain or even to slay a few animals, that thousands, both of men and of animals, might live.
Who would think it right to put a few drops of the hydrochlorate of cocaine (a year ago almost an unknown drug) into the eye of a man, not knowing what frightful inflammation or even loss of sight might follow? Had one dared to do it, and had the result been disastrous, would not the law have held him guilty and punished him severely, and all of us said Amen? But so did Christison with Calabar bean, and well-nigh lost his own life. So did Toynbee with prussic acid on himself, and was found dead in his laboratory.[1] Accordingly, Roller,
- ↑ I add the following striking extract from a speech in defense of vivisection, on April 4, 1883, by Sir Lyon Playfair, deputy Speaker of the House of Commons—no mean authority. The italics are my own:"For myself, although formerly a professor of chemistry in the greatest medical school of this country, I am only responsible for the death of two rabbits by poison, and I ask the attention of the House to the case as a strong justification for experiments on animals, and yet I should have been treated as a criminal under the present act had it then existed. Sir James Simpson, who introduced chloroform—that great alleviator of animal suffering—was then alive and in constant quest of new anæsthetics. He came to my laboratory one day to see if I had any new substances likely to suit his purpose. I showed him a liquid which had just been discovered by one of my assistants, and Sir James Simpson, who was bold to rashness in experimenting on himself, desired immediately to inhale it in my private room. I refused to give him any of the liquid unless it was first tried upon rabbits. Two rabbits were accordingly made to inhale it; they quickly passed into anæsthesia and apparently as quickly recovered, but from an afteraction of the poison they both died a few hours afterward. Now, was not this a justifiable experiment upon animals? Was not the sacrifice of two rabbits north saving the life of the most distinguished physician of his time?. . . Would that an experiment of a like
