VIVISECTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] said in my last letter that, all things considered, we might deem Professor Schiff's " declaration" in the Times of the 7th satisfactory. But I must now confess that each time I have read it over it has appeared to me less satisfactory than I at first hoped it would be. The chief difficulty consists in our inability to re- concile his statements, not only with the practical exigencies of vivisections generally, but with the more than probable truth of the complaints made against him, which do not consist, we must remember, of the assertions of a single complainant, but of a notorious public fact, namely, that the inhabitants of Via San Sebastiano, having borne the " shrieks " and " howlings " for some years, could bear them no longer, and have recurred to legal measures ? Again, with every wish to guard myself against the liability, common to all of us, of being carried away by an almost general clamour against a man, I submit that if his laboratory is such a model one, how can we account for the repugnance the people have for him ?
As regards the difficulty of reconciling the " declaration " with the practical results of most, if not all vivisections, the third paragraph, to anyone who knows what vivisection means, presents insuperable obstacles. It is there stated that the animals are killed immediately after the experiment, and before they have returned to consciousness. I am myself totally at a loss to infer what it is intended that general readers should understand by this assertion. But we shall all be relieved to know that even two- thirds of the poor creatures dissected are put out of their misery within one hour after consciousness has returned. As the paragraph now stands, however, it is, whether intentionally or not, either a suppressio yeri, or what is indeed the same thing, a statement that calculates on the ignorance of general readers. I have before me notes of experiments made on the nervous centres of 59 reptiles and fishes, 132 on various birds, and 159 on mammals. In none of these experiments were anaesthetics used, which a law ought to make imperative ; but what I wish to state regarding these experiments is, that most of these animals were kept alive or lived from one hour to about two or three days. Much depends on the nature of the experiment, and whether it will admit of their taking any nourishment. Some, of course, die at once. But now, if I were to inform general readers that I had destroyed them all the moment the experiment was over, I should be telling the truth, but not the whole truth. Again, e.g., a common experiment is to induce mechanical jaundice in a dog, by cutting down on the biliary duct, and tying it. Now in this, and very many other oases, the poor creature will live from fifteen to thirty days. The animal is seldom or never killed, but is allowed to die, and then opened. If these and similar instances are made to bear on the
Professor's third paragraph, I think moat persons will at once per- ceive that it is thoroughly well calculated to deceive. If he were ordered to send in a yearly return, showing how many experiments- he had made, and the number of days or hours each animal expe- rimented on had lived and endured, we should take a very differ- ent estimate of his "declaration." This brings the question to the issue I have always insisted on,—that legal measures must be- framed to control vivisections. We must all draw the soundest inferences we can, but for myself, I do not doubt that the Pro- fessor has been ruthlessly reckless, both of numbers and of suffer- ing. Seven hundred dogs in one year is an inhuman abuse : the keeper of the Dogs' Home gave me this figure. Say they were- only 500. No person of any experience at all will deny that all of us are too ready to be lavish and reckless when abundance is at our disposal.
Your readers will find Professor Montegazza's experiments, or rather his cruelties, recorded in the Gazzetta Medial Lonzbarda, published in February, 1871 ; but as comparatively few read Italian, and fewer still are likely to have the opportunity of refer- ring to that journal, I must content myself with putting before you a summary, published in the Medical Times and Gazette of March 4, 1871, prefaced by the following editorial remarks. The italics are in every instance mine :- " These experiments, as may be supposed, involved much suffering,. and we wish that we could state that the data supposed to be ascer- tained by them are of sufficient importance to justify its infliction.. This, however, is not the case, for we see little in them not already- known, or that might not have been reasonably inferred."
"1. Pain disturbs the digestion in many ways—viz., by diminution of appetite, repugnance to food, various forms of gastralgia and dyspepsia,. the arrest of stomachal digestion, vomiting, or diarrhoea. 2. We are able to demonstrate experimentally in animals that pain renders gastric digestion much slower, the effect being alike in batrachians and mam- mals. 3. in the higher animals, prolonged pain produces, on nutrition, as its ultimate effects, a great degree of debility and much emaciation. 4. In frogs, during winter, when alimentation cannot disturb the effects of pain, prolonged suffering induces, on the part of the animal, the absorption of a larger quantity of water, approaching to the condition of saturation in cadaveric imbibition. This absorption is in the direct proportion to the loss of force by the animal, and to its approach to death—the nature of the death not seeming to exert any influence on the absorption of water which takes place after its occurrence. 5. This imbibition of water is so regular that, in the frog, it may servo as a true measure for appreciating, during winter, the amount of debility and the danger to life. 6. Indirect and very grave effects of pain on the general nutrition are the establishing a greater vulnerability to all noxious causes, and affording a more propitious soil for all pathological germs, whether inherited or acquired. 7. It is probable, but not de- monstrated, that pain, besides enfeebling the economy by a direct dimi- nution of the digestive and assimilative processes, may alter the com- position of the blood, by pouring into it the products of a pathological digestion—true ferments of proximate or remote disease. 8. In the nerves of a limb for a long time tortured histological lesions may be found after death, which it is highly probable are due to the mechanical in j ury."
What other result did this torturer expect ?
"9. In the centres of the spinal marrow no sensible changes of structure have been recognised, even when the torture has been uninterruptedly continued during a month. 10. It appears that the most serious traumatic lesions are less dangerous to nutrition and to life when, by means of etherisation, pain is prevented. 11. The disturbances of digestion and nutrition brought on by pain are such and so numerous that it is more easy to imagine than to specify them. They traverse the entire scale, from simple anorexia to death from inanition, from. vomiting to tuberculosis."
Now, a man's judgment may be so weakened by inordinate zeal, strong bias, and foregone conclusions, as to make it impossible for him to admit that any excesses, any cruelties, are ever com- mitted in a physiological laboratory, and he may even go so far as to assure general readers that " the experimenter is not indifferent to the signs of suffering, but often endures with the animal ex- perimented upon the acutest distress, for the great end in view,— the advancement of science" !
Anyone making this statement must of course assume that he is quite able to answer for the tender feelings of all, or say most vivisectors, and that none, or only a few, get hardened by habit ; and that all, more or less, control their ambitious desire to outdo their fellow-vivisectors in the attainment of the order of Nature.. After reading the above assumption, I said to myself,—Away with
this trash ! But as I wish this painful subject to be understood and justly appreciated by the public, I would ask,—While the poor animals were suffering untold tortures day and night, are we to suppose that Professor Montegazza slept less soundly? Did he enjoy his cigar a little less? Did his digestion suffer at all? Most probably he never heard of the saying, and if he has, most likely he does not believe it. Nevertheless, it will be true of him, as it will be true of me, that " what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
An illustrious writer has declared of himself,
"Nature I loved, and after Nature, Art."
But how much of the former is marred and debased by the enormous amount of suffering man inflicts on the brute creation ! some suffering there must be, but most probably as much as one- third is wantonly inflicted, and perhaps another third could be greatly mitigated, if we bestowed on our useful and beautiful -domestic animals as little as one-tenth of the sympathy and solicitude we bestow on a troublesome toothache.—I am, Sir, &c.,
ARTHUR DE Nog WALKER.
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