Scientific Method in Biology/Chapter 7
VII.
PRURIGO SECANDI.
ANOTHER serious ethical danger connected with unrestrained experiment on the lower animals is the enormous increase of audacious human surgery, which tends to overpower the slower but more natural methods of medical art, and to divert attention from hygiene.
This modern increase of surgery, entailing permanent mutilation, has received a special name, prurigo secandi, or cacoethes secandi. It prevails in France, and in every country where no restraint is placed on animal experimentation,[1] or where the importance of not injuring the moral sense of students has not been recognised.
The great increase in ovariotomy, and its extension to the insane, is so notable a result of this prurigo secandi that it becomes a serious question whether the practice of ovariotomy, though sometimes beneficent, is not on the whole a disastrous discovery, and whether it should not be regarded as a confession of medical impotence, of insanitary education and social corruption, rather than as a satisfactory triumph of surgical skill. The destruction of motherhood is either a martyrdom or a degradation. In no case can it be boasted of as 'brilliant surgery.'
Dr. Chanu, in his carefully prepared thesis of 1896, in exposing the grave abuse of this branch of surgery, estimates that there were 500,000 castrated women in France, and one in every 250 women throughout Europe. He finds the decrease of the birth-rate to coincide with the abuse of ovariotomy. 'Dr. Chanu affirmed, before a jury unable to refute his assertion, that the abuse of ovariotomy has done more harm to France in ten years than the Prussian bullets did in 1870, and that the causes of the depopulation of France are closely allied to the practice of the castration of women.'
The prevention of disease in the organs of generation must be sought for persistently in improved education of the young—the male as well as the female—and in JUST relations of the sexes.
Operative surgery should excite strong suspicion when it enables a Dr. Keppler to exalt 'marriage with a castrated woman as the ideal of a neo-Malthusian union, the only way of securing its object without endangering health and happiness.'[2]
Of the same nature as the prurigo secandi of medical practice is the motive or source of much of the laboratory experimentation.
The various ethical dangers resulting from conscienceless or irrational experiments on animals demand much more serious consideration by the profession than has hitherto been given to them. In the opinion of an increasing number of intelligent physicians, a vast amount of what is now presumptuously called research—experiments disguised under learned names, but which are really the irrational mutilating and diseasing of sentient living creatures—are no more scientific research than is the gratification of a child's curiosity when it sticks a pin, with a thread, through a cockchafer, to see how long it will fly and how loud it will buzz. The child, when punished for its thoughtless cruelty, might remonstrate in learned terms that it should not be restrained, for it was investigating the vital endurance of the Melolontha vulgaris, and the acoustic properties of its wing-covers, under interesting and abnormal conditions.
A large proportion of what is simply conscienceless curiosity, often starting from more or less frivolous tentative diversions of the laboratory, though now by courtesy named research, is no more valuable than the child's spinning of the cockchafer, and should be as sharply checked.
The genesis of discovery in biology, with its necessary relations to therapeutics, has yet to be written. Extending experience is more and more clearly showing us, as a practical fact, that whilst observation and rational—i.e., humanely limited — experiment are legitimate and noble efforts for the attainment of improved medicine, cruel and merely curious experiment, condemned by our moral faculties, are misleading and mischievous.
Men like Professor Henschel, of Upsala, and Professor Pettenkofer, of Munich, warn our eager young investigators against drawing conclusions as to human beings from experiments made on animals.
We find, as a matter of fact, that all the permanent advances of medicine have been gained whilst pursuing rational and righteous methods; whilst all the fiascoes of supposed discovery have resulted through departing from them.
Anæsthetics, antiseptics, and sanitation are not the result of cruel experimentation. Danger of Inoculation.
The most serious fallacy arising from erroneous methods of biological research is the practice of vitiating human blood, by the introduction of the diseased products of animals. This dangerous method, which threatens to undermine national health, is the necessary outcome of diseasing animals, on the plea of seeking remedies for human disease.
The intellectual fallacy involved in this practice will be considered later; but its ethical character as affecting conscience must here be noted, as it is this line of research which is productive of the most extended form of cruelty to the lower animals, viz., slow torture.
The following extract from records of the Belgian Academy of Medicine illustrates this subject: 'Researches on the inoculability of cancer ought to be encouraged. The numerous experiments made on animals are still contradictory in results. Drs. Francotte and De Rector have, in the years 1891–92, inoculated mice under the skin of the shoulder. The inoculations were carried on from June, 1891, to May, 1892, when the following appearances were presented: The whole region of the shoulder was inflamed; there was necrosis of the corresponding upper extremity, which dropped off from dry gangrene; the stump left was indurated, hard, and painful, whilst the lymphatic glands in connection with the part were enlarged. The examination of the tumour disclosed nothing very particular. The bones were the seat of osteoperosis, and the arteries showed arteritis. The investigators believe the tumours were cancerous, but this statement must be received with caution.'
Such long-continued torture, even of a mouse, is morally degrading, and, as if in retribution, is doomed to be useless.
A Chinese medical author—Tuan Mei—writing in the last century, 1716–1797, lays down a true medical axiom when he marks the difference between death and torture as follows: 'Living creatures are for our use, and we may put them to death. But we may not make death a boon, and then withhold it from them.'
- ↑ 'Professor Leon le Fort, Professor Verneuil, Professor Duplay, and Professor Tillaux, have been asked by a public journal for their opinions on the operative mania (furie opératoire), said to be prevalent at present. Professor Le Fort says it is much more widespread in France than in other countries, and in a long letter he protests against the custom amongst the young French surgeons, in order to bring their names before the public, "to seek out some operation unknown in France, then seek out a victim on whom they can perform it, in order to report it before a medical society, and perhaps also show the patient." Then, says M. le Fort, they take up the operation as a speciality, perform it on 100 or 200 patients, and thus gain a reputation. Professor Verneuil protests against the abuse of operations in general, and especially of gynaecological operations. He deplores the prurigo secandi with which so many of the French surgeons are attacked. Professor Duplay and Professor Tillaux express the same opinions.' See Medical Reprints, May, 1893.
- ↑ See the Journal de Médecine de Paris.