Experimentalising in the interests of pathological science .does not seem
to be confined exclusively to the lower animals. In last week's. British Medical Journal, Mr. Jonathan Hutchin- son, senior surgeon to the London Hospital, discourses as follows to his students on a patient just cured of a sort of
plague of boils :—" He was sent in by my friend and former pupil, Dr. Torn Robinson, in order that he might be cured. You will say that the hope of cure is the motive which brings most of our patients to us. True ; but in this instance there was something more than this. Dr. Robinson could easily have cured him himself, but he sent him here in order that I might do the miracle of cure under your eyes, and thus claim your belief in the efficacy of drugs. You will remember his state when admitted ; he was covered from head to foot with bullfe ; the trunk was less severely affected than his limbs, head, dre. ; on these, there was nowhere a space as large as the palm free from bulk% and on the trunk also there were a considerable number. He was in a miserable condition from pain and irrita- tion. The eruption had been out about ten days, and it affected the mucous membrane of his mouth, as well as the skin. You may remember that we kept him in bed for a feu, days before we used the magician's wand, in order that all might see that there was no natural tendency to amelioration. More hullo came out ; then, without making the slightest change in diet, we ordered a few drops of a tasteless solution of arsenic to be swallowed three times a day. The result was that, at our next visit, most of the Wire had dried, and there was no fresh ones." The sentences we have italicised show that this unfortunate patient was deliberately kept in a state of extreme suffering several days longer than he need have been, in order that the students of the London Hospital might " improve the occasion." And for this painful experiment, we suppose, no licence was taken out, or was needful. We suspect the subscribers to our various London hospitals would not approve at all of this deliberate pro- longing of suffering, for the intellectual benefit of the students. But this is the kind of attitude towards human patients which the habit of experimentaliaing in the torture of animals is apt to produce.
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