ity in ophthalmic surgery, piscidia as a substitute for opium, the hypodermic method of using drugs, and so on through a long list. And, as to the old drugs, it may be truly said that we have little exact, that is scientific, knowledge of any one except through experiments upon animals;[1]
Let us see now something of what America has done in advancing practical medicine by vivisection. In passing, I may say that the assertion that America has contributed but little, so far from being an argument for the restriction of vivisection, is a strong argument for its further cultivation, in order that greater good may result from remarkable discoveries here, equal to those that I shall show have been made in Europe.
Wounds of the abdomen, especially gunshot-wounds, are among the most fatal injuries known to surgery. A small, innocent-looking, external pistol-wound may cover multiple and almost inevitably fatal perforations of the abdominal contents. The recoveries from 3,717 such wounds during the late civil war only numbered 444, and of those with escape of the intestinal contents the recoveries, says Otis, may be counted on one's fingers. The prevailing treatment as laid down in our text-books has been purely conservative, treating symptoms as they arise. The brilliant results achieved in other abdominal operations have led a few bold spirits, such as our own Sims, Gross, Otis, McGuire, and others, to advocate the opening of the abdomen and the repair of the injuries found.
In May of last year, Parkes, of Chicago, reported to the American Medical Association[2] a series of systematic experiments on thirty-seven dogs, that were etherized, then shot, the abdomen opened, and the wounds of the intestines, arteries, mesentery, etc., treated by appropriate surgical methods. The results confirmed the belief awakened by earlier experiments and observations that surgery could grapple successfully with multiple and formidable wounds, by sewing them up in various ways, or even by removing a piece of the bowel and uniting the cut ends. Hard upon the heels of this important paper,
- ↑ For three hundred years digitalis, for instance, has been given as a depressant of the heart, and, when a student, I was taught to avoid it carefully when the heart was weak. But the accurate experiments of Bernard and others have shown that it is, on the contrary, actually a heart tonic and stimulant. So long as I live I shall never forget the intense joy of myself and the agonized parents, when one bright young life was brought back from the very grave, some five years ago, by the knowledge of this fact, and this is but one of many such cases. Thus have the action and dangers of our common anæsthetics been positively and accurately ascertained; thus the action of ergot on the blood vessels, explaining alike its danger as an article of food and its wonderful use in certain tumors of the uterus and diseases of the nervous centers; thus, too, every one who gives opium in its various forms is a debtor to Bernard, and every one who gives strychnine a disciple of Magendic.
- ↑ "Medical News," May 17, 1884. I shall refer readers frequently to this journal, as it is often more accessible than foreign journals, and it will refer them to the original papers.
