Those of our medical men who maintain the right and
the humanity of vivisection would do well to inquire into a case brought to light the other day by our able and instructive contemporary, the Zoophiliet. It referred to a case in the Scandinavian "Medical Archives," Vol. XI., 1879, in which Dr. Salomonsen had descanted on the effects of giving milk or flesh taken from animals affected with tubercular disease, and bad instanced the case of a Danish physician who had actually fed his own baby with milk from a consumptive cow, and had thereby produced a disease of the eyes (a scrofulous affection of the conjunctiva} in his baby. The present writer confesses that he read this account with incredulity, believing that such con- duct would be criminal under almost any European law as well as guilty. He therefore begged the editor of the Zoophilist to verify the case, and a translation of the account is now before him, which looks authentic enough. The cow had long suffered from cough and slight inflammations of the lungs, and on its death, a cavity of the size of a walnut was found in one of its langs. Even after the death of this cow, the unfortunate infant was not fed on wholesome food, but was fed from a cow which had inherited the tubercular diathesis from its mother (the one proved by the post-mortem to be affected with grave tubercular disease). The Danish physician expressly states that all his other children were strong and healthy, so that no medical Motive could be attributed to the experiment. It is all very well to say that the new ethics which justify the passion for physiological experiment, do not produce hardness of heart towards human beings. But how are such deeds as these, —if they be not only true, but avowed before the world by those who do them,—to be characterised ? Are not Englishmen as. susceptible of hardness of heart as Danes P
Previous page
