of Vienna, properly and wisely tried cocaine first on animals,[1] and then, finding its beneficial effects, tried it upon man with like results, and one of the most remarkable drugs of modern times was thus made available. We are only on the threshold of its usefulness. It has been used in the eye, the ear, the nose, the mouth, the larynx and all other mucous membranes, in the removal of tumors, and as an internal medicine. When its physiological action has been still more thoroughly and systematically investigated, its poisonous dose ascertained, when we know how it works, what its effects are upon the blood-pressure, the heart, the nerves, the blood-vessels—effects that can not be accurately studied upon man—its usefulness may be increased to an extent as yet but little dreamed of. Should it only soothe the last painful hours of our great hero, General Grant, a nation will bless it and the experiments which gave it effect. Moreover, had the experiments of Dr. Isaac Ott, of Easton,[2] on this very drug, borne their due fruit, America would have had the honor and the human race the benefits of cocaine ten years ago—ten years of needless suffering!
This is but one illustration of the value of experiments upon animals in the realm of new drugs. In fact, substitute for cocaine other drugs, or new operations, or new methods of medical treatment, and the argument repeats itself for each. Within the last thirty years a multitude of new drugs have thus been discovered, and their effects have been either first tested upon animals, or their properties studied exhaustively in a manner impracticable upon man. I will only enumerate some of them, since time will not allow me to enter upon each in detail. Thus have been introduced lily-of-the-valley in heart-disease, yellow jasmine, in diseases of the heart and nervous system, paraldehyde and chloral-hydrate, so valuable for sleep, caffeine for headache, eucalyptus as an antiseptic and in medicine, nitro-glycerine for nervous maladies, Calabar bean for diseases of the eye and nervous system, naphthaline and iodoform in surgery, quebracho as an antispasmodic, antipyrin and kairin in fever, jaborandi in dropsy, salicylic acid in rheumatism, nitrite of amyl in epilepsy and intermittent fever, jequir-
- ↑ "Archives of Ophthalmology," September and December, 1884, p. 402, New York, Putnams.
- ↑ Ott, "Cocaïn, Veratrin, and Gelsemium," Philadelphia, 1874.
kind on a rabbit or a Guinea-pig bad been used by John Hunter, who probably shortened his own noble life by experimenting on himself!. . .
"Let me give one other instance. . . . A few years ago two young German chemists were assistants in a London laboratory. They were experimenting upon a poison which I will not even name, for its properties are so terrible. It is postponed in its action, and then produces idiocy or death. A experiment on a mouse or a rabbit would have taught them the danger of this frightful poison; but, in ignorance of its subtle properties, they became its unhappy victims, for one died and the other suffered intellectual death. Yet the promoters of this bill would not suffer us to make any experiments on the lower animals so as to protect man from such catastrophes. It is by experiments on animals that medicine has learned the benefits, but also has been taught to avoid the dangers of many potent drugs—as chloroform, chloral, and morphia."